South Africa

South Africa, Maverick Life

The duchess and the Afrikaner tramps

The cover of Grace and Flavour, memoirs of Loelia Duchess of Westminster. (Image: Supplied)

12 Sep 2024

For the two of us, soon any inbred superior attitude would be clipped to the bone by an imperious elderly lady living on a vast country estate. The Duchess of Westminster was our last work placement before the South African army refused to grant Pierre further leave.

It is early evening here in Cape Town on 8 September 2022, and I am watching Sky News. All of a sudden a black banner appears, and the announcement comes, Queen Elizabeth II has died.

And then, our screens are filled with the global mourning for a very stable monarch. Followed shortly after by the counterblast, the corrosive effect of colonial imperialism still too fresh under the skin.

“Give back the crown jewels”, a depleted Africa sighs, and it all comes flooding back, my own experience of working for royalty.

In the summer of 1988, my then boyfriend, now husband, Pierre, and I landed in Britain from South Africa with only backpacks for luggage, cash-strapped, footloose and fancy free as only young, cosseted upstarts can be.

In the Britain we entered, the initial “Thatcherphoria” was waning fast, and two years later Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister.

Meantime in South Africa, things were starting to unravel for the apartheid government. Sanctions were having a dire effect on the economy. And more and more South African soldiers were dying in the border war.

The two of us, even while growing up in the whitewashed Afrikaner cradle of Stellenbosch, were strongly opposed to the government and its increasing clampdown on its critics. But we did not know the half of it, and you could hardly have called us anti-apartheid activists.

Media control kept us ignorant. It was only a couple of years later during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission proceedings that we started learning more about the full blast of the government’s barbaric machinery.

Banned anti-apartheid publication

Nevertheless, we toyi-toyied in lacklustre Stellenbosch University student protests, and I published an article about substandard education for people of colour in a banned anti-apartheid publication.

But we were not all that fearless, were not quite prepared, like many University of Cape Town students, to lay down life and limb for the cause.

Our decision to travel overseas meant that Pierre could temporarily defer compulsory conscription into the South African Defence Force in a war we did not believe in. The deep blue sea of the army seemed less perilous than the devil of detention without trial as a conscientious objector.

It was in this spirit that we entered the UK at Dover to find illegal care work. We had done some travelling through Europe first, and our plan was to make money in England to fund the rest of our travels.

But first, some pertinent knick knacks from our journey before landing in Britain. A year before we left for Europe, we befriended a Flemish Belgian exchange student in Stellenbosch, who invited us to visit him in Antwerpen. He informed us that he belonged to a left wing organisation in his home country, and would love for us to meet his fellow activists.

Imagine our shock when we discovered that this “radical” underground movement was a right-wing organisation, sympathising with the apartheid government.

We were led like MI5 agents down alleyways and up steep stairs into a covert meeting place. There, we were congratulated with the success of our government's separate development policies.

At least we had the gumption to try to set them straight, and though they received our opinion with much bonhomie, no shift of perspective took place.

Towards the end of the evening, we were gobsmacked when they started singing Afrikaans folk songs, some dating back to the Boer War that had probably not been sung since.

In the Netherlands, we were asked how we could live in apartheid South Africa. Our answer was that we were born there. Where else would we live? We were African through and through in our hearts and minds.

It did not occur to us that we were as colonial as the English, who our parents and grandparents perceived as the real interlopers, the remnants of animosity left behind from the Boer War.

Assumption of superiority

There’s a saying that the in-group is often unaware of its own condescension. If you grew up as a white South African during apartheid, the assumption of superiority came with the territory. It was written into our DNA from the day you were born, into our history books at school, and finally into law in the 1960s.

But for the two of us, soon any inbred superior attitude would be clipped to the bone by an imperious elderly lady living on a vast country estate. The Duchess of Westminster was our last work placement before the South African army refused to grant Pierre further leave.

Lady Lindsay of Dowhill, Loelia Duchess of Westminster (Photo: Wenley Palacios, Flickr)

We had a tiny taste of what was to come with our first two positions. My job as companion to the sweet-natured Lady Southborough, the wife of a former managing director of Shell, was fairly uneventful apart from two happenings.

She was hellbent on changing my South African vowels into the Queen’s clipped tones. Don't say “better” say “batter”, she would say. A lost cause, as the Afrikaans lilt in my accent remained as flat as ever, even today.

Her second goal was to find my ascendents in the Plantagenet Blood Royal book. Afterall, I was a direct descendant of Fenshams hailing from Cambridge. Another futile mission. Not a Fensham to be found among the aristocracy. We were pure unadulterated peasantry.

Unlike my friend Zelda, whose Hansby ancestors were aristocracy emigrating to South Africa. Yet somewhere along the way they were classified as “coloured” during apartheid, and relegated to a second-class existence.

Pierre’s first post was as a carer for Brigadier Gibbons, who served under Lord Mountbatten during World War 2. On his arrival, Pierre asked the brigadier how he was doing. His reply: “I’m dying too slowly.”

The brigadier suffered from shell shock, nowadays defined as PTSD, but in the 1940's you had to simply grin and bear it. He would let loose blood-curdling screams in the middle of the night, to Pierre’s consternation.

One night, Pierre’s bedroom door opened ever so slowly rendering him catatonic with fear, just to see a sleepwalking brigadier’s long chin appear around the corner.

For someone who was waiting to die, the brigadier was quite enterprising. He shared a beer-making business with his friends, Colonel Roberts and a World War 2 nurse called Snowdrop.

Pierre woke up in the middle of the night from what sounded like an apartment under siege, just to discover that beer bottle tops were shooting all over the place in the pantry.

None of this prepared us for our final placement with a haughty peeress. Loelia Mary, Lady Lindsay, formerly Duchess of Westminster, née Ponsonby, was born on 6 February 1902 to Sir Frederick Ponsonby, later 1st Baron Sysonby, and cookbook author Victoria Ponsonby.

As the only daughter sandwiched between two brothers, she grew up in St James Palace, where her father was courtier to Queen Victoria, Edward VII, King George V, and Lieutenant Governor of Windsor Castle. Here, the two princesses, Lisbet and Margaret, played around her feet.

Bright Young Things

She was a member of the Bright Young Things, a group of Bohemian aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London, who got up to all sorts of mischief.

In her memoir, Grace and Favour, The Memoirs of Loelia Duchess of Westminster, she described how she came up with the idea for all-night treasure hunts through the streets of London, leaving clues for others to find. This became a popular institution.

They would indulge in fancy dress parties, dressing as farmyard animals, mythical creatures and romantic Meissen shepherdesses. All in the name of escaping profound boredom.

Yet, unlike many of her idle upper-class peers, she also had somewhat of a career. Features editor. Accomplished needlewoman. Author.

Today, prime samples of her needlework are kept by the National Trust. Her features editor career began at Homes & Gardens in the 1950s, after which she penned her memoir in 1961.

Such was the stature of the woman, who was put into the care of two clueless South Africans. We simply called her “The Duchess”, although she was officially Lady Lindsay, using the title she inherited from her second husband.

By the time we encountered her, her career was behind her. She was 87 years old, yet still tall, sprightly and oh so formidable. Now, her life existed out of entertaining and socialising with other aristocrats.

She had moved from the big manor house on the rural estate to the “gardener’s cottage”, which was in itself ostentatious. Not what us middle-class plebs call downsizing.

It turned out our jobs had nothing to do with care work. We were full-on servants with our own servants’ quarters and separate entrance. As free thinkers we were ill-prepared for servitude, and the poor Duchess was at the mercy of two inept commoners from the wilds of southern Africa.

That we would end up working as servants for the former Duchess of Westminster seemed as outlandish as to be born from fiction. Even more so, the fact that I would land up cooking for her aristocratic friends, some of whom I had read about in magazines.

In true Downton Abbey fashion, there was a board with bells in our servant’s passageway. The Duchess would press a button, and the appropriate bell would ring on our side, indicating which room she was in. One of us would have to run to the particular room to be at her service.

Cheap labour

One might wonder why she did not employ well-trained British professionals, but the reality was that the gentry often had to resort to cheap labour. Owning a large estate with its extensive upkeep does not a wealthy peer make.

On our first day, we were overwhelmed with a litany of orders. Dutiful me had to be first parlour maid, second parlour maid, cook, cleaner, dish washer, as well as curtain opener and closer.

Ironically, until then we had lived a somewhat charmed life, growing up with full-time domestic help making our beds and washing and ironing our clothes. Now, the shoe was on the other foot.

As overall skivvy, it was my job to clean the house with its eight bathrooms and even more bedrooms. This, on top of cooking breakfast, a three-course meal for lunch and a two-course meal for supper.

Overall, I flew by the seat of my pants, and somehow got it right by default, to the extent that the Duchess invited seven guests for lunch. One of them was Anthony Armstrong-Jones, also known as Lord Snowdon, former husband of Princess Margaret and royal photographer, as well as filmmaker.

I was a nervous wreck. Up until then my cooking skills were limited to making pasta. Thus, there followed many desperate collect calls to my mum for recipes and moral support.

As the ill-suited butler, Pierre was on a permanent half-strike. When the Duchess asked him to cover all the statues in the garden with straw, he refused point blank.

“I am not a gardener,” he grumbled. And to think I still married the man the year after, though he did improve with age.

The only task he was prepared to do was serving the duchess’s lunch, cocktails and dinner in the well-appointed dining room where I laid the table. I quietly thanked my mum for teaching me table etiquette at a young age.

There were two dumb waiters, one for savoury dishes, all in silver and slightly green around the gills with age, and one for dessert. Pierre had to make sure that he served from the correct dumb waiter or there was hell to pay.

During one incident, after putting the dessert bowl on her placemat, he noticed that she seemed to be waiting for him to do something more.

“Where must I put the spoon? In my hair, young man?” she once exclaimed. And at that, he had to move the spoon from its place setting and into her dessert bowl.

One time, Lord Snowdon invited her to lunch and we had to drive her to his estate. When we reached the wrong side of a one-way road, she commanded that Pierre drive up the road. When he told her that it was illegal, she responded with “not in my day, young man”, and up the wrong way we went, mercifully devoid of traffic.

The author (right) with her friends Emmeline and Tova in Paris. (Photo: Supplied)

No food or drink

On the Snowdon estate, we waited for hours after being told we were not allowed to leave. We were famished and thirsty, but no food or drink were forthcoming. As mere servants, our needs were non-existent.

I was cut down to size already on our first day, when I plucked up the courage to ask her about her life.

“Don’t speak to me unless spoken to, young lady,” she retorted. And for the first time in my existence, I had an inkling what it meant to be born into the wrong class.

The cover of Grace and Favour, memoirs of Loelia Duchess of Westminster. (Image: Supplied)

But she was not altogether a blue-blooded bad egg. She humoured me by giving me her memoir to read. And that is how the world of the eccentric British upper classes opened up to me like the golden carriage of the current king.

During her debutante season, as a young woman coming out to society, she was noticed by the already twice-divorced Second Duke of Westminster, 22 years her senior, who showered her with flowers and would not take no for an answer.

They were married on 20 February 1930 in a blaze of publicity with Winston Churchill as the best man, and Charlie Chaplin as a guest.

But this childless marriage was far from successful. In fact, it was described as “a definition of unadulterated hell”, and was dissolved in 1947 after years of separation. Nevertheless, the divorce hit her hard, and she fled to her close friend, Noel Coward, the playwright, to recover.

Her second marriage, to explorer Sir Martin Lindsay, first baronet, in 1969 was far happier, and he remained a doting husband until his death in 1981.

By October, Pierre got his final call-up papers to do his military service. By that time, we were thoroughly homesick. Winter was descending on the UK in all its grey misery.

We missed the electric blue sky of Cape Town, the flat Karoo landscape with sunsets from ear to ear, the cauldron that simmers just under the surface of Africa, waiting to deliver unexpected things, pleasant and unpleasant.

For the first time in our existence, we felt what it was like to be a servant in someone else’s home. Our colour meant nothing there, only our lowly class. And yet, we could fly back to South Africa and slot back effortlessly into our privileged middle-class lives, serfdom firmly behind us.

I wonder when one starts belonging to the country your distant ancestors moved to, no matter your colour. How many centuries does it take for the soles of our feet to merge with the soil? Will one forever be caught in the duality of one’s colonial being living in Africa, which came at such a great cost to others?

Rendered less than

We never forgot what it felt like to be rendered less than, and truth be told we were hardly roughing it with the Duchess. Our servants’ quarters were positively luxurious compared to the squalor in which domestic workers still have to live in our country.

I became acutely aware of the quiet eyes and ears of the domestic help, who unnoticed would observe the sometimes-questionable conduct of the higher classes behind closed doors. Our vista of the world would never be the same.

Soon after, South Africa was peacefully led into democracy, and Nelson Mandela walked free. The duchess passed away at the ripe old age of 91 in 1993, her last days spent in a nursing home.

This year, a new Duchess of Westminster arrived in high society, when Hugh Grosvenor, the current Duke of Westminster, and godson of King Charles, married Olivia Henson on 7 June with a host of royals in attendance, including Prince William.

And for the umpteenth time, I sat in wonderment that, for a short space in time, our lives collided with this prominent upper-class family, leaving permanent tattoos on our lives, and a great story to tell. DM

Thérèse Fensham is a content writer and poet, who has published her poetry and short stories in various literary publications, both locally and globally.

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