How to fleece your servants with the promise of some hanky-panky
There’s never a new idea under the sun. A century before Facebook, the toffs of erddig hall near Wrexham devised a low-tech form of social media that turned the servants’ quarters into a hotbed of romance.
Alan Titchmarsh led us, on Secrets Of The National Trust (C5), along a corridor lined with photographs of the staff from edwardian days, each displayed with a verse of poetry penned by the master of the house, Philip Yorke.
One stanza celebrated the marriage of ernest, a groom from the stables, to the children’s nanny, Lucy. But that was just one of the erddig love affairs — historians have counted 17 more.
Most aristos discouraged hankypanky below stairs, Alan explained, but not the Yorkes.
And it turns out they had hit upon a psychological quirk, one that would create internet billionaires 100 years later: give people a chance to display their selfies and the opportunity to spice up their love lives, and they’ll give you anything in return.
For the moguls of the 21st century, that means access to our innermost thoughts. For the Yorkes, it was something more basic — cheap labour.
In exchange for their place in the photo gallery, the servants of erddig were prepared to accept salary cuts of a third. At the turn of the last century, a cook could expect £65 a year, or about £5,000 today. The Yorkes paid just £45.
Because Alan’s style of history is jolly and shallow — more of a daytrip than an archaeological excavation — he didn’t allow the full implications of this to sink in. And he rushed one of the best stories of the series so far . . . the tale of ellen Penketh, the ‘young and beautiful’ Thief Cook of erdigg.
ellen went on trial in 1907, accused of fiddling the books and pocketing £500. Louisa Yorke, the mistress of the mansion, called her ‘a regular professional thief’. But the jury heard the young cook hadn’t stolen a penny: she had simply run up huge debts on the household accounts, trying to supply food and drink for Louisa’s extravagant parties.
Innocent or not, ellen’s reputation was ruined. she was dismissed, while Louisa carried on living beyond her means.
This episode was packed with too much good material. Miriam O’reilly had about three minutes to tell us about the Isolated Baronet, an aristocrat from Derbyshire so antisocial he had tunnels dug under the lawns so he wouldn’t have to look at the servants coming and going.
Like social media, this historical gossip can become addictive.
Comedians Bob and Paul were becoming addicted to the ancient art of one-upmanship, in the gently hilarious Mortimer And Whitehouse: Gone Fishing (BBC2). It began with a friendly contest to catch the biggest barbel on the river Wye, and ended with a bragging match about their most famous celebrity fans . . . which Paul won easily.
David Bowie, he claimed, was such an admirer of Paul’s sketch series The Fast show that he could do impressions of the characters. As fishing tales go, that’s like hooking a blue whale. Bob couldn’t begin to compete.
Both comics are recovering from serious heart scares but, though Bob is only 59 and Paul just 60, dodgy tickers weren’t the half of it. Both of them struggled to force themselves to their feet, and Paul practically needed to be winched into his waders, the way Frank sinatra in his final days had to be lowered into his tuxedo trousers.
In the heady days of reeves and Mortimer, they used to cry: ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!’ Many a true word spoken in jest.