Free Up and Down Stairs by Jeremy Musson Page A

presentation of beautiful objects and magnificent rooms. Whilst we admire their dedication today, we should also give full credit to those in centuries past whose working lives were spent in preserving and protecting these works of art and fine furnishings.
     
    However, the privately owned and family-occupied country house must concern itself with more than conservation, although it is certainly essential. Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, is no exception to modern trends. Many observers have praised the Dowager Duchess’s role in the heroic revival of this great palace, both as an admired visitor attraction and as a family home. 86
     
    The funeral procession of the late duke on 11 May 2004 was attended by all those who worked in the house, garden, shops, restaurants and on the wider estate, dressed in the uniform of their roles,and was widely reported in the national and local press. It was an iconic image of the private country-house community, still going strong in the twenty-first century although of a kind more typical of the largest traditional estates, on which this book has focused. Having inherited the house and extensive estates in 1950, the 11th Duke had to face 80 per cent death duties, which took many years to discharge, via the sale of land and the house’s treasures such as important artworks and rare books. The bill was eventually settled, so that Chatsworth could continue to be occupied by the descendants of its sixteenth-century builder. Today it is home to the 12th Duke and his family. 87
     
    In the story of its revival, a major factor is the two-way devotion between the Chatsworth staff and the Cavendish family. When I wrote to the duchess, asking about staffing at Chatsworth, she responded to my letter by sharing memories of those who had made it all possible, and inviting me to come to meet some of them. I visit on a crisp winter’s day, with sun and mist making that famous Derbyshire valley, with the dreamlike baroque palace at its heart, seem all the more beguiling – and the Devonshires’ joint achievement in keeping it together all the more inspiring. For the duchess, who has retired to a house in the beautifully sited estate village of Edensor, one element stands out in the story of those who have worked at Chatsworth. ‘Trust is essential. It’s got to be done on trust or it might as well not be done at all.’
     
    Chatsworth, which the duchess made her life’s work for nearly half a century, is, as with many great houses, a complex organism, ‘like a museum and a grand hotel combined, but it has to be a home too, otherwise it is simply a museum’. 88 She introduces me to three of her staff who had each worked for her for forty years or more. As she said: ‘They have been the absolute lynchpins of everything, men of such amazing calibre.’ These were Henry Coleman, who is still her butler today and was both butler and valet to the late duke since 1968; Alan Shimwell, her chauffeur and loader, also since 1968; and Jim Link, who started working for the estate in January 1950, in the forestry department, and went on to become head gardener.
     
    I start by meeting the family’s long-term butler, a legend to themany distinguished guests entertained by the duke and duchess. Henry Coleman began his working life at Chatsworth in March 1963:
     
I came as a footman, aged only sixteen, and after five years became butler. I had first started work at Lismore Castle in the forestry nursery, and when the family came to Lismore at Easter for their annual visit I was asked to take the logs around for the fires, with the odd man. The butler told me that there was a footman’s place going at Chatsworth and asked whether I was interested. Being the eldest of twelve children, all living at home, I jumped at the chance.
     
    There was a substantial permanent staff in the house at the time, with ten or twelve indoor staff:
three in the kitchen, two in the pantry, two housekeepers, four daily women, two