The newspapers described the rain as torrential. It poured in buckets. It drenched everything. It seeped through wool cloaks and coats; it cascaded from the brims of hats. This was chilling February rain, certain to bring on chest ailments and fevers to those who persisted in standing in it, yet none of the spectators’ “spirits were in the least damped.” They came in the thousands, pressing against the rails of Buckingham Palace, and lined the route to St. James. Most of those assembled were, as the Morning Chroniclewrote, “generally of the working classes.” They “scrambled and pushed and squeezed” for a position allowing them to catch a glimpse of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in their wedding attire.1 Young men scaled trees, and police officers promptly yanked them down. On several occasions, the crowds threatened to move onto the parade route, but horse-mounted detachments of the Queen’s Life Guard, their shining breastplates partially covered by their scarlet winter capes, held them back. Excitement surged as a procession of carriages appeared. Loud whoops and cheers could be heard, followed by cries of “God save the queen!” The crowd heaved forward, reaching out their hands to touch the vehicles and the horses, to spy the bright blue eyes of the royal bride. The troopers of the 2nd Queen’s Life Guard advanced, cracking their whips above the heads of the masses, holding the line “with a mixture of firmness and good humour which won the approval of all present.”
It was for this—the spectacle of such pageants, the pride of serving in the cavalry of one of the most prestigious regiments in the country, the thrill of sitting tall on a mount and wearing polished boots—that George Smith, just fifteen in 1834, had left his home in rural Lincolnshire and come to London. Three years earlier a recruiting sergeant had come to the nearby village of Fulbeck and enlisted his elder brother, Thomas, in the 2nd Regiment of the Life Guard. As a young boy, George could scarcely wait to join him. When he appeared at Regent’s Park Barracks, he was still underage, but the regiment nevertheless accepted this enthusiastic recruit. They taught him to ride like a cavalry trooper and how to polish his breastplate and clean his helmet. He learned quickly the strict routines of army life—how to stand, march, salute, and discipline his body so that he never slouched or “loafed about.” George and his brother were recruited because they were strong, healthy country lads of sturdy physique, perfect for sitting astride a mount. According to his army records, George stood at five feet, ten inches tall when he enlisted; he had a fair, clear complexion and brown eyes. The regimental barber cut his light-brown hair short, but because George was a trooper in the cavalry, he was permitted to cultivate a fine mustache.
Under the guidance of his regiment, George came of age. His position in the household cavalry secured him a front-row seat to history. He witnessed the passing of the Georgian era and the birth of the Victorian age: in 1837 he served at the funeral of King William IV and in 1838 at the coronation of the new queen. On February 10, 1840, he was there to participate in the ceremonies of state on the occasion of her marriage, guarding his monarch against the crowds.
On that day, when Londoners crowded into the streets and celebrated the marriage of their monarch, it is likely that a twenty-two-year-old servant called Ruth Chapman was among them. Little is known about this Sussex-born young woman, who, like so many others, left home to work in the capital. Her family at least thought it wise to baptize her at fifteen before sending her off into the wide world, with its manifold temptations. What good it did her is questionable; by the time of the queen’s nuptials she had already met and formed an attachment to a trooper of the 2nd Life Guards.
It is possible that she and George met somewhere near his barracks on Portman Street. A relation of Ruth’s worked for a Sussex family who lived at nearby Clifton Place, where she too may have been employed. Hyde Park, a notorious venue of flirtation for soldiers and servants, lay just in between. According to Henry Mayhew, it was here that housemaids and nursemaids walking in the park to and from their place of work often first encountered “the all powerful red coat” and “succumbed to Scarlet Fever.” Soldiers were by no means unaware of the impact their dashing uniforms and well-groomed military air could have on young women, and deployed these features to their advantage. As the army actively discouraged marriage among enlisted men, and low wages meant that the average private “could not afford to employ professional women to gratify his passions . . . he is only too glad to seize the opportunity of forming an intimacy with a woman who will appreciate him for his own sake, and cost him nothing but the trouble of taking her about occasionally.”2 More important, at least from the army’s perspective, a monogamous relationship with a decent working-class girl “was unlikely to communicate some infectious disease” to a soldier and would keep him away from prostitutes.3 Such arrangements may have served an ordinary enlistee well, but it placed the object of his affection in a difficult, and potentially ruinous, position. By January 1841, Ruth found herself in just such a situation.
The precise day on which Annie Eliza Smith was born in September 1841 is unclear. Because she was an illegitimate child, Ruth may have attempted to hide the facts of her birth. The conditions in which Annie arrived could not have been entirely happy for Ruth, who would have lost her employment as her pregnancy advanced and would have found herself dependent upon meager and unreliable handouts from George. In the eyes of society, and the army, Ruth had become a “dolly-mop”: a soldier’s woman. Though such a woman did not quite fall into the category of “professional,” she was deemed a sort of “amateur prostitute.” Fortunately, the army’s position on dolly-mops was a pragmatic one, so long as only six out of every hundred enlisted men in a regiment were permitted to marry. In the field, such women would have been known as camp followers and allowed to earn their keep by taking in the regiment’s laundry; when the cavalry remained in barracks, these women were often called upon to perform the same duties. One trooper’s woman remarked that she made ends meet by doing “a little needlework in the day-time” as well as “some washing and mangling now and then to help it out.” She lived in a room near the barracks, for which she paid a shilling a week.* Ruth’s circumstances would have been similar.
For five months after Annie’s birth, Ruth’s position remained a precarious one, especially as she soon found herself pregnant with a second child. Regardless of George’s affection for her, there remained the ever-present possibility that he might be posted abroad, a circumstance known to be the death knell of many romantic attachments between soldiers and the women they hadn’t married. Had fate taken this turn, Ruth would have been left with no financial support, two children, and a soiled reputation. When placed in such a position, it was conventional for dolly-mops to remain loyal to the regiment and seek another protector within it, or from within the barracks. However, this remedy was not without consequences; in doing so they committed themselves to a career in prostitution. Fortunately, on February 20, 1842, two years after the commencement of their relationship, George received permission to marry his sweetheart. Whether it was George’s expressed wish or the thoughtful intercession of his commanding officer, the date of his nuptials was backdated by two years on his military records. Anyone who inquired would learn that George and Ruth’s wedding had taken place in the same month and year as that of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
From the day of the couple’s first acquaintance through their subsequent years together, the army would completely define the lives of George, Ruth, and their children. Although marriage ensured that Mrs. Smith was now “on the strength,” meaning that she was included as an official regimental wife, this did not necessarily make life more comfortable for her. The army provided Ruth and her children with half rations and permission to live within the barracks, but these arrangements were not pleasant, nor even healthy. Designated married quarters were not provided until the 1850s, and so newlyweds like George and Ruth had to make do with corners of the communal barracks room, screened off with sheets and blankets. Women dressed and undressed, lay in bed, washed, gave birth, and breastfed their babies surrounded by single men, who often strode about half-naked, swearing, jeering, and singing lewd songs. Sanitation was not much better. When a national inspection of barracks was made in 1857, the dwelling spaces were revealed to be in appalling condition. Many dormitories were set over the stables and ill-ventilated. Dampness and poor lighting were the norm, as were insufficient washing and latrine facilities. In some barracks large barrels were used as communal chamber pots; these same receptacles were emptied and then used for bathing. Kitchen facilities too were found wanting. Most contained no ovens, which had a significant impact on the diet and health of military men, who subsisted largely on boiled food.
There were, however, some benefits for families who “lived on the strength.” Army savings banks were established to allow soldiers to put aside small sums, medicine from regimental supplies was made available to sick men and their families, while all ranks and their dependents were given access to the barracks’ library. Most important, by 1848, families “on the strength” were allocated a small allowance for suitable accommodation outside the barracks; though the amount did not ensure many comforts, it did at least permit soldiers and their wives some privacy and a home of their own. This would have proved especially timely to the Smiths, whose number continued to expand over the decade. Shortly after Ruth and George’s marriage in 1842, a brother, George William Thomas, joined Annie and her parents. He was followed by Emily Latitia in 1844, Eli in 1849, Miriam in 1851, and William in 1854, bringing the number of children to six.* Annie and her siblings would enjoy one of the greatest benefits of “life on the strength”: the regimental school.
More than twenty years before a British system of mandatory state schooling was implemented, in 1870, the sons and daughters of families on the strength were required to attend organized lessons funded by the army. This was meant to counteract the possible negative effects of growing up in and around the barracks, an environment thought to be “incompatible with decency.” Many believed that children might acquire habits of “idleness and vice” there; girls in particular were to be shielded from “the more masculine habits of drinking and swearing.” These schools were also meant to assure soldiers that the sovereign cared about the education and welfare of their children, and to help the children of enlisted men “acquire the means of making themselves useful and earning a livelihood.”4 Having been instilled with military ideals that included discipline and respect, most regiments regarded this school attendance as compulsory; families that hesitated to enroll their children were threatened with being struck off the strength. Of course, the regiment also expected soldiers to pay for this privilege. George would have been charged two pence a month for Annie to attend, and then one penny for each sibling who joined her.
The curriculum of the regimental schools was similar to that of civilian charity institutions. The schools were divided into those for small children and those for grown ones. The younger children were taught by a schoolmistress in the morning, while the elder children were instructed by the schoolmaster. Following lunch, the sexes were separated for more gender-specific occupational instruction. The boys remained with the master, and the girls joined the schoolmistress. Considering the instructional standards of the first half of the Victorian era, these children received a fairly rigorous education. The small ones were taught spelling, reading, and singing, a curriculum that would expand to include lessons in writing, diction, grammar, English history, geography, arithmetic, and algebra. Under such a regimen, Annie would have received an education far superior to that of most of her working-class peers, both male and female. As a girl, she would also benefit from afternoon lessons in “industry”—specifically, in every type of needlework, from embroidery to making clothes, crocheting, and knitting. Girls thus acquired skills that would render them useful to the regiment, in mending and making garments, and also assist them in finding paid work when their schooling was complete. The only complication in this arrangement was that army life was mobile and necessitated frequent moves between barracks and postings, which regularly interrupted the children’s instruction.
Although George and his family never had to endure the hardships of a foreign posting, neither were they able to grow too comfortable in their domestic surroundings. Regiments were rotated between barracks, often with little notice. Moving to and organizing new lodgings near barracks on Portman Street, Hyde Park, and Regent’s Park in London involved inconvenient relocations a few miles in one direction or the other; the larger upheaval of traveling to a posting in Windsor, more than twenty miles outside the city, required great effort and expense. Over the course of George’s service with his regiment, from the 1840s through the early 1860s, the family lived at no fewer than twelve addresses between London and Windsor.
One curious aspect of growing up as the child of a soldier in a socially prestigious regiment involved straddling two disparate worlds. The cavalry, with its aristocratic officers and its proximity to the royal family, brought opportunities to glimpse, from afar, a realm of status, privilege, and wealth. Annie’s girlhood was spent between Knightsbridge, with its elegant stucco-fronted villas, and Windsor, in the shadow of the royal family’s residence. The sight of landaus, filled with ladies in expensive silk bonnets and titled gentlemen whose uniforms clanked with medals, would have seemed ordinary, as would a glimpse of Queen Victoria or a royal prince trotting on horseback through Windsor Great Park. When Ruth and her children stepped out from the door of one of their temporary homes, they walked along clean, broad, well-lit streets, comparatively free from signs of want. They inhaled the fresh air of Hyde Park alongside the perfectly attired, parasol-twirling members of high society. From a young age, Annie would have been taught to take pride in her father’s position and to adopt his love of queen and country as her own. The regiment’s values of honor and dignity would have been inculcated in her as well. How Annie stood and spoke and comported herself, while not making her appear privileged, would have demonstrated that she understood the rules of appropriate conduct and was aware of her place within her surroundings. These skills and discernment would remain with her into adulthood, so that she always gave the impression of having come from a good family.
Yet Annie also experienced life as a child of the working class. Despite the privileges of her father’s position, his salary was meager. While the family lived in Windsor, they rented lodgings on Keppel Terrace, a road whose houses had been constructed and decorated “at considerable expense,” in order to appeal to “small, genteel families.” Each three-story property, with its “Portland stone mantels,” “rich cornicing,” and “fine views over the River Thames,” was comprised of “two parlours, three bedrooms and servants’ quarters” in which three army families lived, while sharing a kitchen and lavatory facilities.5 The quality of some of their housing in Knightsbridge was at times even worse. Hidden between Knightsbridge’s “fine mansions and respectable abodes,” and no more than a moment’s walk from its exclusive shops, existed a small pocket of “insalubriousness” across the road from Hyde Park Barracks. “From Knightsbridge Green all along the High Road stood a succession of music halls, taverns, beer-stores, oyster saloons, & cheap tobacconists” deemed “a disgrace to any portion of London.”6 Here also was situated some of the only housing that the families of enlisted men could afford. When possible, the Smiths lived at a distance from these establishments. In 1844, they took a small cottage on Rutland Terrace near the Brompton Road, but as the century progressed, rents in the better areas increased and pushed regimental families into the densely populated streets between two of the most notorious music halls: the Sun and the Trevor Arms. Raphael Street ran east to west, just on the fringe of this carnival of iniquity, and although its housing stock had been completed only in the past couple of years, its homes had already been carved up and portioned out to multiple families on lower incomes. In 1854, the Smiths were living at number 15 with at least two other families; each occupied two rooms.
In the late spring of that year, just when the weather had turned milder, the London newspapers began to write of an alarming rise in the number of cases of scarlatina, or scarlet fever, recorded by the London Fever Hospital. Soon outbreaks were reported in Islington, Knightsbridge, and Chelsea, though journalists attempted to offer some reassurance to the wealthier part of the population by confirming that: “the disease is principally among the labouring classes.” On May 3 the Daily News wrote that a coachman who lived near the very wealthiest of society in Eaton Mews South had watched as “malignant scarlatina carried off all five of his children in nine days.” The paper warned readers that the outbreak “was very bad in this district.” Tragic stories of what was now declared an epidemic continued through the summer. “Scarlatina increases weekly,” wrote theMorning Post on July 27; “the . . . disease has visited some families with severity, and . . . an instance is reported in which three children died of it in the same family within 6 days.” In early June, the London Fever Hospital hit a crisis point, when “upwards of 100 patients” were admitted for scarlet fever alone. The situation was exacerbated by the arrival of a second epidemic: typhus.
Whereas scarlet fever, a flu-like streptococcal illness characterized by a red rash, predominantly affected children, typhus attacked both young and old alike. Commonly known as “camp fever” or “gaol fever,” the disease was communicated through the bites of fleas and lice. These insects were present in the clothes, blankets, and bedding shared among people in close quarters. Like those afflicted with scarlet fever, typhus sufferers also experienced a high fever as well as a rash, which spread across the body. Eventually, in fatal cases, the infection moved to the brain.
In mid-May, both epidemics arrived at Raphael Street. An infant named John Fussell Palmer, not quite eighteen months old, was the first to die of scarlet fever. How rapidly the disease crept through the porous plaster walls and crowded rooms along the street is unknown, but shortly after the Palmer child fell ill, sickness came to settle in the Smiths’ home. Annie would have helped care for two-and-a-half-year-old Miriam when their mother was busy with her newborn, William. Little Miriam would have been toddling about the family rooms, giggling and prattling, turning over chairs and getting underfoot. A fever and sore throat, flu-like aches, and much crying suddenly replaced these activities. When the rash appeared, there was no doubt as to what had befallen her. She suffered until May 28, and was buried quickly on the following day. While Ruth and George were nursing their youngest girl, William too was afflicted by the rash and fever, and five days later, he died at the age of five months, on June 2. After carrying away the two youngest, seven days later, scarlet fever took its next victim, Eli, at the age of five.
It cannot be imagined what George and Ruth felt when their eldest son, George Thomas, who had just turned twelve, fell ill. Like the others, he had a fever, which raged for two weeks, and a rash spread across his body. He lay in his sickbed, his condition worsening, while the family buried his brother Eli. Because families of enlisted men were not permitted to call upon the services of the regiment’s physician, the Smiths were forced to summon a doctor whose fees they could hardly afford. George Thomas was diagnosed with typhus. He struggled with it for three weeks before expiring on June 15.
Over the span of only three weeks, death had claimed four of the Smiths’ six children. The enormity of this tragedy is almost inconceivable to modern sensibilities, particularly as their lives might have been spared had they lived in an era of antibiotics. However, George and Ruth were powerless in the face of incurable illness. The death of children was simply an unfortunate but not uncommon aspect of life, though this fact did not make the experience easier for the parents or the surviving siblings. Now only two of the Smiths’ children remained: Annie and Emily. Long after the event, this calamity continued to cast a heavy shadow over the family.
Somehow Ruth and George found it in their hearts to move forward. Two years later, in 1856, a daughter, Georgina, was born in Windsor. She was followed by another Miriam: Miriam Ruth, in 1858. In the midst of this, Annie grew into a teenage girl with dark, wavy brown hair and an intense blue-eyed stare. At about the time that her mother’s arms were once again filled with a newborn, Annie would have been nearing her fifteenth birthday. Traditionally this was considered the age when a girl’s education was complete and she would be expected to start earning a full-time wage. For a large number of teenage girls, this meant entering domestic service. This transition was almost a rite of passage: a young woman took on the burden of supporting her younger siblings and made the sacrifice of leaving her family home. Although removing herself from her parents’ protection did pose potential moral dangers, domestic service had advantages over other options, such as factory work, because a young woman could gain skills that would prove useful in her future married life. As a result, between 1851 and 1891, nearly 43 percent of British women between the ages of fifteen and twenty entered this occupation. Ruth Smith herself had been in service. When Annie came of age, Ruth had Emily at home to assist with the younger children, thereby freeing Annie to begin to make contributions to the family income.
By 1861 Annie Smith was working as a housemaid for William Henry Lewer; whether this was her first job in domestic service is unknown. A successful architect, Lewer lived at numbers 2 and 3 Duke Street in Westminster, a part of London that a number of designers and engineers called home. Several doors down, at numbers 17–18, lived Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the great creator of railways, bridges, and tunnels, and his family. As long-term residents of Duke Street, the Lewers and Brunels, who shared professional interests, would have been acquainted socially. It is likely that Annie and her fellow housemaid, Eleanor Brown, as well as the Lewers’ housekeeper, Mary Ford, would have recognized the family, or even had the privilege of waiting upon them in their masters’ drawing room.
In 1861, Annie was the junior of three women who tended to sixty-seven-year-old William Lewer and his bachelor brother, Edward, a retired stockbroker. Although all three would have begun their working day at 5 or 6 a.m., Annie’s responsibilities would have been the most arduous. Sometimes described as “maids-of-all-work,” servants in small households were expected to perform every task, from the miserable chore of washing dishes three times a day, to hauling buckets of coal up flights of stairs, making the beds, and lighting the fires in the grates. At the Lewers’ home, Mrs. Ford, the housekeeper, may have doubled as the cook; it’s likely that Annie would assist in the preparation of meals and in serving them as well. Even though she served only two older gentlemen, Annie’s list of jobs would rarely allow her a spare moment. When she wasn’t dusting, or clearing out fireplaces, she was scrubbing the floors, beating rugs, drawing water for baths, polishing boots, or mending clothes. The Lewers may have sent their dirty linens to one of London’s many commercial laundries, but if they didn’t, the strenuous work of washing, rinsing, wringing, and ironing would have fallen to Annie as well. For their hours of toil, housemaids were remunerated poorly. Mrs. Beeton, in her Book of Household Management,published in 1861, suggested that a maid-of-all-work should receive annual pay of nine to fourteen pounds; if the employer supplied the maid with an allowance to purchase her own tea, sugar, and small beer, this figure was reduced to seven and a half to eleven pounds.* Employers believed these small sums were justified because they were providing the young woman’s room and board. In the Lewer household, where apparently space was plentiful, Annie and Mrs. Ford had their own rooms above the architect’s office at number 2 Duke Street, while Eleanor slept in the attic at number 3. For Annie, who had spent her life sharing two or at most three rooms with her entire family, the privacy she enjoyed in William Lewer’s servants’ quarters must have seemed strange and wonderful.
When Annie began life as a live-in domestic, she would expect to see very little of her family. For a housemaid, time off was granted at the discretion of her employer, and most servants could expect no more than a day or even a half day away from their duties each month. An hour or so on Sunday for attending church was also permissible. These restrictions, however, would have made it difficult for Annie to travel to and from Windsor, where the Smiths were based until 1861.
For roughly twenty-one years, the army had beaten the march that the Smith family followed. For both Ruth and George, the regiment, and the families and officers who comprised it, formed the defining framework of their lives. This closed, clanlike community, who migrated together between barracks, who had shared housing and meals, whose children had been schooled together and grown up as if they were cousins, who had consoled one another, and lent each other money, would leave an indelible stamp on each of the Smiths’ sense of identity. This was especially so for George, who as he entered his forties would be forced to contemplate retirement and his future prospects. The 2nd Regiment of the Life Guards had been a family to him as much as his wife and children. So closely were the two intertwined that he chose to name his youngest son in recognition of those under whom he had served. On February 25, 1861, Fountaine Hamilton Smith was born at 6 Middle Row North, a short distance from Raphael Street, where George and Ruth had parted with three sons and a daughter in 1854. Perhaps, in that same year, George experienced some relief from this tragedy when John Glencairn Carter Hamilton (later 1st Baron Hamilton of Dalzell) became one of his captains. Whatever support Hamilton provided, whether financial, emotional, or spiritual, George never forgot his kindness. Neither was he able to forget the bond he had forged with another of his commanders, Captain Fountaine Hogge Allen, whose death, in November 1857, must have affected him profoundly. It is likely that Fountaine’s birth signified to George the approaching end of his career, and inspired in him a desire to commemorate those men and experiences that had shaped his person.
As a loyal servant of the regiment, who had earned four distinguishing marks for good conduct, George was judged a suitable candidate to become a valet to his commanding officers. According to army regulations, cavalry officers who were not already attended by a civilian were permitted to employ a “soldier servant” from within the regiment to maintain their military kit and uniforms, care for their physical appearance, and manage the administrative details of daily life.
In 1856, Roger William Henry Palmer, a hero of the Crimean War who had participated in the charge of the Light Brigade, returned to Britain and exchanged his commission in the 11th Hussars for one in the 2nd Life Guards. When selecting a valet from among the men in his new regiment, Palmer spotted the necessary qualities for a “gentleman’s gentleman” in Trooper Smith.7
Within the hierarchy of servants, a gentleman’s valet had a prestigious role. Significant trust was invested in him. No other servant was permitted such intimate insight into an employer, from his physical weaknesses to his thoughts and personal secrets. To be selected for such a position, George would have been judged to possess “polite manners, modest demeanour, and respectful reserve,” along with “good sense, good temper, some self-denial, and consideration for the feelings of others.”8 A valet had many tasks to perform. According to Mrs. Beeton, that arbiter of social custom, valets were required to tend to their masters by “dressing them, accompanying them in all their journeys” as well as acting as “the confidents and agents of their most unguarded moments.” More specifically, a valet took on “brushing his master’s clothes, cleaning his top boots, his shooting, walking and dress boots; carrying up the water for his master’s bath, putting out his things for dressing, assisting him in dressing, and packing and unpacking his clothes when travelling . . .”9 Although Mrs. Beeton points out that many gentlemen preferred to shave themselves, a valet had to be prepared to perform this task too, as well as regularly trim his master’s beard and mustache.
The benefits of George’s association with Palmer would be wide-ranging. Already a military hero when his path crossed with George’s, Palmer would eventually succeed to his family’s Irish baronetcy. Being a valet allowed George to remain within his regiment but excused him from parades and barracks responsibilities, including the universally disliked guard duty. It entitled him to live in the officers’ mess, where he received better food, and sometimes wine as well. When Palmer was elected as a member of Parliament, George’s duties took him away from army life altogether and into the exclusive realm of country houses, shooting parties, and the government. Because Palmer spent much of his time as a commissioned officer traveling between his family estates in County Mayo, George got to see Ireland and the opulent interiors of its castles and manors. Then, in 1862, George Smith, the son of a Lincolnshire shoemaker, went to Paris.
The year before, George had begun to serve as valet for another officer in his regiment: Captain Thomas Naylor Leyland. So much had Leyland come to value his “soldier-servant” that when he chose to marry and exchange his commission for one in the Denbighshire Yeomanry, he asked George to leave the 2nd Life Guards and accompany him.10 This opportunity would have required a good deal of deliberation, but it arrived at a time when reason demanded that George take it. Leyland was offering him a paid position, which would place George among the butler and cook within the top rank of his household servants. He could expect to receive £25–£50 per year, in addition to his army pension of 1 shilling and 1½ pence per day. As a middle-aged man from the working classes, George could hardly do better than this for his family.
On March 19, 1862, less than a month before his forty-third birthday, Trooper George Smith became Mr. Smith. He bid farewell to his associates, the barracks, and the regiment that had made him, and set off to accompany Thomas Naylor Leyland to Paris, where Leyland had arranged to marry his fiancée, Mary Ann Scarisbrick, at the British embassy before embarking on a honeymoon in France.
From about the end of 1861, it appears that Ruth and George decided to settle the family more permanently in Knightsbridge, near Leyland’s palatial, art-filled mansion, Hyde Park House. This was conveniently situated in the area that Ruth knew best, near the Hyde Park Barracks and within a short walk from the home of George’s brother, Thomas, who had also retired from the regiment and returned to the family occupation of shoemaking. Much like Annie, George likely saw little of his family while occupied in domestic service, and this estrangement from his wife and children, and from his former regiment, began to bear down on him. A valet, when not tending to his master, had time to himself, to read, to think, and without the distractions of family or regimental life, there were many subjects George did not wish to ponder. Undoubtedly, the deaths of four of his children were among them.
In 1863, Captain Leyland had agreed to act as steward at the Denbighshire Yeomanry Cavalry Races in Wrexham, to be held on June 13. This large, convivial social gathering would include a grand dinner for the officers and their ladies. The evening before, members of the regiment and their guests arrived in town and retired to their lodgings. While his master resided in officers’ quarters, George shared a room at a pub, the Elephant and Castle, with another member of Leyland’s staff. As they extinguished the light that night, George appeared his usual self, and “quite cheerful.” The next morning, between 7 and 8 a.m., the servant called out to George, to remind him of the time. “It’s all right, I’m not asleep,” he answered, though he made no attempt to get out of bed. Less than an hour later, when George had still not appeared, the landlady went upstairs and, much to her horror, discovered Leyland’s valet “with his throat cut, in a shocking manner, with a razor lying by him covered with blood.” George was dead by the time he was found, on the floor, “with only his shirt and drawers on.”11
That day, which had been intended as an occasion of sporting amusement, immediately soured into one of shock and dismay. When informed of the horrible news, Thomas Naylor Leyland rushed to the scene and “was much affected” by what he beheld. However, so that the races would not have to be abandoned, the coroners quickly assembled that afternoon and presented a verdict of “suicide by cutting his throat with a razor while labouring under temporary insanity.”12 There was also the suggestion that George had been drinking, a problem to which he had succumbed quite seriously since leaving the army.
Notwithstanding the unfortunate turn of events, Leyland still appeared on the turf that afternoon to watch the horses run, though it cannot be imagined that he derived much pleasure from it.
He later paid the expenses of George’s funeral.
There is no record of what occurred when Ruth and her daughters received the news. Fountaine, who was only two, would never know his father. The pension to which George had been entitled expired with his death; in the mid-nineteenth century the law did not permit a widow to make a claim on behalf of a deceased husband. Overnight, the family was bereft of an income, other than the money that Annie sent home or that her sister, Emily, may have earned. For the Smiths, this dire situation could have landed them in the workhouse.
Curiously, this did not happen. By the following year, Ruth had returned to an address where the family had once lived, in 1851: 29 Montpelier Place, situated in the respectable lower-middle-class Knightsbridge neighborhood that they had come to know as home.* With three floors, including a basement kitchen and larder, as well as a first-floor parlor, which hinted at middle-class pretensions, this was certainly the most comfortable house the family had occupied. It is unlikely that Ruth could have afforded the rent on such a property without assistance. After George’s death, Leyland would have paid what was owed of his valet’s quarterly wage to his wife, and, given the tragic circumstances, he may have made a donation to the widow as well, a gesture not uncommon among employers at this time. Ruth invested the money she received wisely and, following the lead of many of her neighbors, took the lease on an adequately sized home and let out rooms to lodgers. Because the house was equipped with a full kitchen and scullery below stairs, she could make some extra income by taking in laundry.
Due to its affordability and its location near the mansions of Knightsbridge, Montpelier Place and the surrounding streets were a haven for those in domestic service. Housemaids, butlers, valets, and footmen filled the census returns for the area from the 1860s through the 70s. Additionally, the street’s position close to several mews (or groups of buildings that include private stables) meant that more than ten addresses on Montpelier Place alone were occupied by coachmen and grooms. Among them was a young man named John Chapman.
Little is known about the man who appeared one day at the door of 29 Montpelier Place and inquired about lodgings. Although he and Ruth shared the same surname, their families apparently had no connection; still, John’s name may have endeared him to his soon-to-be-landlady at their first meeting. Born in 1844, John came from a family of “horse-keepers” in Newmarket, Suffolk. This center of racing and horse breeding would have given Chapman an immersive education in the needs and care of these animals. He and four of his brothers started out as stable assistants and grooms, brushing, feeding, and exercising horses, before eventually working their way through the ranks to become coach drivers. By the second half of the 1860s, John had come to London to pursue his trade, probably in the employment of a family.
It might be that Annie met her mother’s lodger in the kitchen of the family home, on a rare day away from her workplace. Or perhaps Annie was residing at home when John came into her life. Either way, something blossomed between them, though it is impossible to say what, exactly. Annie, at age twenty-seven, was not yet married, a situation not unusual for a woman who had spent her “eligible years” in domestic service. But at this age she knew that to refuse an opportunity to marry might mean passing the rest of her days as a spinster, a person universally regarded with pity. With the exception of Fountaine, who was still a boy, the Smiths were now a family of women, headed by a widow. The addition of a man, who might earn a steady livelihood and act as paterfamilias, would have been most welcome. This would have been Annie’s great moment—a chance to make a success of her life, to become everything society intended for her. No longer just a helpmeet to her family, she could become the mistress of her own home and, most important, a wife and a mother.