How to be a Downton hostess
. . . Even if your home’s a semi not a stately. Our columnist gets a masterclass in elegant entertaining from the real Countess (and her THREE Carsons!)
AS THE taxi drives up, it’s hard not to catch the breath. For there it is, the eternal silhouette of Downton Abbey, thrusting upwards from the Capability Brown grounds and shouldering aside the blue spring sky.
Lord Grantham is strolling the lawns with Isis padding at his feet, while Maggie Smith sits alone on her bench under the cedar, clutching her stick and frowning, waiting for afternoon tea to be laid in bone china on the linen-covered table, and Lady Mary is… cut!
Though this is where the cult series was filmed, I’m actually here to extract hospitality tips from my hostess for the day, the Countess of Carnarvon, the chatelaine of Highclere Castle – the Berkshire seat of eight successive earls, who variously discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, entertained Royalty and Prime Ministers, raced the Queen’s horses, and occasionally died of mysterious pharaonic curses (along with their dogs).
Right on cue, the 8th Countess, a creamy bosomy blonde in cornflower blue linen smock over jeans, surges forth from a side door and my lesson in entertaining Downton-style begins.
We pelt from the estate office to the hens – all named after Jane Austen novels – to collect eggs, then hurtle towards the large, professional kitchen, where we’re going to eat them for our elevenses and then prepare lunch.
It’s highly unlikely any vinegary snobbish phrase (‘what a weekend?’) is going to drop from the lips of the current Countess, who claims that her busy career as a hostess, mother, historian and businesswoman is mere ‘multi-muddling’.
She’s more labrador than greyhound in appearance and temperament. She sweetly doesn’t know how many rooms there are in the castle or how many acres it occupies (about 300 and 6,000 respectively), and seems giggly and approachable.
But still, she thinks things should be done a certain way and has therefore set it all out in a book that brings to life what it’s like, both upstairs and downstairs, in the state rooms and behind the green baize door – and above all, how much hard work goes into making sure her guests have fun the authentic way that Julian Fellowes channelled so successfully for Downton Abbey.
At Home At Highclere is a cocktail of history, gossip, comfort food, shooting l unches, cosy suppers, steamed puddings and grand dinners, all set around four historic weekends when Disraeli, in 1866, Henry James, in 1886, the Prince of Wales, in 1895, and Sir Malcolm Sargent in 1935, came to stay for a country house weekend in the castle.
Having imbibed the book, my first question for the Countess is whether she was terrified when the 7th Earl died in 2001 and she took on the role of – I can’t help it – Lady Grantham.
‘I was to start with,’ she admits. ‘It was my husband’s family home and his mother was more of a traditional wife to my father-in-law, while Geordie [the current 8th Earl] and I have more of a… partnership.’
We go straight to the kitchen where Mrs Patmore and Daisy (oh all right, Paul and Rob, the chef and sous-chef) await, and my education in high-class hospitality begins.
1. YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED – BY EMAIL
MY FIRST surprise is to learn that Lady C sends invitations to stay by email in the first instance. For a shooting weekend (pheasants, not the neighbours) the guests should apparently be booked in about seven months ahead; weekends require only a couple of weeks’ notice, but a Royal Visit, everyone, should be planned up to a year in advance.
If the guest replies yes (and I can’t imagine they wouldn’t), she sends a ‘Pour Memoire’ or ‘At Home’ card nearer the time, to reconfirm.
What about bores? I ask (ie dullards you have to have). Lady C denies she knows any, which must be the sign of a genuine hostess. Having said that, she says it’s terribly rude for guests to ask who else will be there. She leaves a list prominently downstairs with everyone’s full names on it for those ‘blankety-blank moments’ to which we are all prone.
2. PLACEMENT! (THE SEATING PLAN)
LADY C doesn’t move people once they are seated, as there are drinks before and after dinner in the Saloon where they can ‘mingle’. She always takes care with the man on her right. If there’s an archbishop or a bishop, he takes the top spot as God Comes First. Useful to know if you’re having the vicar round. If there’s an ambassador or Minister, he’ll go on the other side but often she makes sure she sits next to at least ‘one person I want to look after’.
She keeps a note of who sat next to whom at every meal, and during a weekend invites local guests to dinners and Sunday lunch to mix it and prevent dinners stalling as they always seemed to at Downton. Guests who fiddle with the placement cards are taken out and shot.
3. DON’T SET THE TABLE, LAY IT!
AMONG the modern day Downton staff are Luis (pronounced Loo-ish), Jorge, and Matthew who lay – not set – the table but Luis, it turns out, is a multi-tasker too ‘ as Luis also parks the cars’.
There is a running dispute as to which one is Carson, which one Thomas and which one Mr Bates.
Even if you don’t have three to lay it, anyone can have a Highclere table, it’s easy-peasy: the rules for glassware are ‘white on the right’, and port at the back. And you don’t need to measure the setting with a ruler (phew) just do it by eye.
At Highclere, it’s all so large-scale that they lay dinner as soon as lunch is cleared and ditto breakfast after dinner. Lady C picks the flowers in the grounds and greenhouses – a few daffs might have to do for those without acres of glasshouses – and sticks them in shallow rose bowls ‘so people can see over them’.
4. THE ART OF BABBLING
DINNER table chat always seemed strained and stilted to my ear at Downton dinners but all Lady C says she wants to hear is ‘a happy babble of voices’. So what do you do if there is a painful and protracted silence at your table? ‘Break it!’ she peals. ‘If you’re hostess, make a joke against yourself!’ Men must remember to watch the host and ‘turn’ around halfway through dinner to the woman on the other side. After coffee at dinner, Lady C says, ‘the library and my girlfriends beckon’, and the ladies retire, while the men smoke cigars in the old-fashioned way.
Does she feel it’s a tad stodgy for the 21st Century? On the contrary. ‘I tell the men to stay in the dining room as long as possible,’ says Lady C, and who can blame her?
5. DRESS CODE? VELVET FOR MEN
ALWAYS issue guidance so your guests aren’t wildly overdressed or underdressed compared to you, as the hostess should aim to be ‘somewhere in the middle’ between her most glad-ragged and dowdy guest at Highclere.
Friday nights are for cocktail frocks, while Saturday night is more formal – long or smoking jacket. Dinners at Downton were always
Fiddle with a place card and you’ll be taken out and shot
black tie but Lady C loves her husband Geordie in a velvet smoking jacket (so much so that he wears his both nights).
If your castle i sn’t centrally heated, it’s a kindness to tell your guests to bring thermals, wraps, cashmere, she says – especially if you’re eating outside or ‘ in a folly in the grounds’. I make a careful note.
6. THREE COURSES ARE AMPLE
AS THE dinner or weekend approaches, Paul the chef emails her menus and Lady C vets them and may decide to have a souffle at the last minute, which means a footman has to rush from the kitchen up stairs and down long corridors while a butler shouts ‘ run, run’ as otherwise it sinks (maybe do not try this at home).
Having said that, Lady C tries to limit fiddling with the menu, to source local produce and use the quinces, rhubarb, apples and meat from the estate. Though her new cookbook is full of traditional fare, the castle tradition was always to have French- style dining, with many-coursed elaborate food with consommes, entremets, and so on. Now, three courses are ample and in the evening, Lady C tends not to serve meat, potatoes, pudding or cheese but ‘ fish and vegetables and fruit for pudding’, which sounds healthier, but less Hanoverian, disappointingly. She advises to ‘always have a salad or roast vegetables’ in case any rogue veggies manifest without warning – a growing problem even for those without castles.
7. TIME FOR BED – AND HEADACHE PILLS
EQUIP the guest rooms with ‘everything you might forget yourself’ ie toothpaste and Anadin Extra for those who’ve had too many Bloody Marys in the Saloon. Make sure there are towels, dressing gowns, books and mags in t he guest rooms and, if literally miles from the kitchen, make sure there are tea and coffee making facilities.
‘I like radios in both the bedrooms and bathrooms and sometimes I leave facemasks for my girlfriends who’ve been working terribly hard all week in London,’ says Lady C, ‘And digestive biscuits.’
No dunking at Downton!
8. BLOOMING LOVELY
WHEN it comes to decoration, at Highclere it’s flowers, flowers, flowers as Lord and Lady C collect plants and love to bring the garden into the house and dot plants and orchids around the rooms. She never puts flowers by the bed (‘people sneeze’) but on a dressing table and in the bathrooms.
9. BREAK THE ICE WITH A CROQUET MALLET
ACTIVITIES are very good icebreakers for parties great and small, young and old, posh or common, celebrity or civilian.
After lunch, Lady C rises to her feet after coffee has been round and suggests a brisk walk, as well she might. Mere mortals might head for the common or heath but she has at her disposal what Henry James called ‘ an immense and divine park’. Outdoor favourites include croquet, canoeing, picnics and riding, while for indoor entertainment, Geordie likes charades. Lady C has her ‘special quiz’ and suggests hostesses group teams in fours so ‘nobody feels a chump’.
10. FAREWELL TO ALL THAT
AS THE weekend draws to a close and guests are piling their hillocks of luggage in the front hall and mentally writing their thank-you letters, Lady C sends housekeepers up to sweep all rooms to head off the hostess’s curse: the Things Left Behind. Mainly it’s phone-chargers, but Lady C says hostesses are under no obligation to send on larger items such as coats, PM’s daughters or evening dresses.
‘I just tell people to pick them up when they’re next passing,’ she says (Highclere is near Newbury).
What’s worse, of course, than people leaving things behind is people accidentally taking things with them. ‘I had a beloved pair of wellies which disappeared to Germany with a girlfriend,’ she says. ‘I made her send them back.’
Apart from that rare clang of steel, I can vouch after my day in the castle that Lady C is a delightful and warm hostess from whom we could all pick up a few tips. It’s not about having a 300-room stately home, but the right welcoming and elastic attitude towards the tricky, tiring, rewarding (and very expensive) business of elegant entertaining.
Guests are left digestive biscuits – and facemasks
At Home At Highclere: Entertaining At The Real ~Downton Abbey, by the Countess of Carnarvon, is published by Preface Publishing at £30. Offer price £22.50 (25 per cent discount with free p&p) until April 9. Order at www.mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640.