By Way of a Change (1902)

Dear readers, sorry for the long silence. I am well and still very much interested in our favourite topic, it's just that real life (I know, that's a lame excuse, but what I can say?) and, I won't lie, laziness keep interfering. Anyway, a very interesting find. I am a huge fan of Victorian- and Edwardian-era prints and repeatedly used them for captions in this blog. Work by Charles Dana Gibson, the father of the famous 'Gibson Girl', has always held a special place in my heart. Surprisingly, I'd never come across this interesting 1902 print titled "By Way of a Change" before.  Many of Gibson's prints feature maids, but none unfortunately could be interpreted as lady-to-maid. This is probably the closest we can get. My spoiled mind keeps inventing the story behind it, but obviously it's something as innocent as this real-life masters and servants hotel role swap I did a post on. I am also somewhat reminded of this Edwardian postcard, How Would You Like to Be the Maid?   

Anyway, what do you think is happening here? 

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Promising lady-to-maid idea in a 1923 book

A book by turn-of-the-century British humorist E.V. Lucas, Advisory Ben (1923),  features an interesting lady-to-maid subplot about a rich girl who seeks work as a parlourmaid so that she could learn good manners and pick up tips from a "good family" that would employ her. The novel is about a fictional servant employment agency "The Beck and Call" and this is just one short episode that, as far as I am concerned, could have been an entire book, but well.... Here it is:


Mrs. Hill-Owen (she told me) had not been gone more than a few minutes when a Rolls Royce purred up to the door of “The Book- lover’s Rest,” and a richly dressed young woman emerged and made her way upwards to “The Beck and Call.”

Ben, chancing to be in the front office, received her in person, and asked her requirements.

“I want,” said the girl, “an engagement as parlour-maid.”

“You want?” Ben exclaimed. “But for someone else, of course.”

“Oh, no,” said the girl. “For myself. I want to go into service.”

“Come inside,” said Ben.

“I must get this clear. You want,” she said, when they were seated, “a situation as a parlour-maid?”

Royal Maid Game or Life Imitates Art Again

The Daily Mail, admittedly an unlikely source of lady-to-maid material, published excerpts from what it described as "aristocratic memoir", an upcoming book by Lady Anne Glenconner titled Lady in Waiting. As a prominent member of British aristocracy (her father was Earl of Leister and her mother was the daughter of Earl of Hardwicke), she was one of Queen Elizabeth's maids of honour at the 1953 coronation.

Needless to say a short chapter titled "The day Prince Philip asked me to dress as a maid!", accompanied by a 1949 photo, immediately caught my attention:


In 1949 my grandfather died, which meant that my father succeeded to his title, becoming the 5th Earl of Leicester.

I was 17 and Carey was 15, and we spent that summer cycling to the cinema in Wells-next-the-Sea twice a week with our mother. In the evenings Carey and I would go off to the local American aerodromes where the big bands would perform.

That same summer, the Duke of Edinburgh, who had married Princess Elizabeth in 1947 and often came to Holkham to shoot with my father, rang up my mother one day with an unusual request.

Merle Oberon. Art Imitating Life Imitating Art.

Margo Taft and her "maid"

If there ever was a place with over-abundance of skeletons in the closet it’s Hollywood. However, this real story is quite something even by its standards. 

One of the characters in The Last Tycoon, a recent Amazon TV series based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished last novel about movie studio business, is actress Margo Taft, a fiercely independent star who has a secret that could ruin her career – she’s half-black and is only passing for white, while her real mother is by her side, masquerading as her black maid Lucille. 

Of course, there is nothing new about the whole “passing for white” phenomenon back in the day with numerous actors and actresses (as well as people from other walks of life) hiding their real origin (if their looks allowed) to get a better chance in life. What I didn’t know was that the story about a non-white mother acting as maid to her own “white” daughter is loosely based on an actual Hollywood story, that of Merle Oberon.

Largely forgotten today, Oberon was a big star in the 1930s and 1940s, renowned for her striking beauty.  Her most famous role is probably that of Cathy in the 1939 classic adaptation of Wuthering Heights alongside Laurence Olivier.  Looking at her pictures it boggles me why no one really suspected that she was mixed race, especially at the time when people allegedly paid so much attention to these things, but, not unlike Liberace, she managed to take her big secret – she was born in Bombay in 1911 to a British father and an under-age half-Sri Lankan mother (with some Maori blood to boot) – to her grave. 

Throughout her career she concealed her ethnic origin and maintained that she was born in Tasmania (apparently considered a lot more acceptable that Bombay, not to mention the birthplace of Hollywood’s great Errol Flynn) and only moved to India after her upper-class father died in a “hunting accident”. 

The Feminine Régime: A Book Review

by T.H. Enerdly

Many years ago, probably in the early 1990s, I secured a copy of a book titled The Feminine Regime, authored by Miss Regina Snow, cheaply bound, and incomplete. The book I had was a “teaser,” containing only four or five chapters of a projected 18 chapters. The complete book was eventually published in 1995 by The Wildfire Club. However, much to my disappointment, the publisher ceased operations before I was able to buy a copy.

For the last 20 years or so, I've been looking for a copy of the final edition, or perhaps I should say an inexpensive copy. I discovered long ago that the book is available from antiquarian booksellers but at a price. For example, at the time of this writing, Bookfinder.com lists eight copies for sale, ranging in price from $82.64 to $261.31. These prices are far too dear for my budget. By way of comparison, a copy of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, a book that outsold everything except a Harry Potter book the year of its publication, can be had for $1.46 at Amazon.com. Thus, at the present time, there does seem to be a greater demand for Miss Snow’s book than for Mr. Brown’s book, assuming of course that price is a proxy for demand.

As can be seen from the image of the cover accompanying this blog post, the book seems to be about spanking, a genre for which I have a certain affection. In fact, the books published by The Wildfire Club were advertised in Janus magazine, a popular British spanking publication, no longer published thanks to the Internet.

Recently, quite by accident, I stumbled across a PDF copy of The Feminine Régime at Archive.org. You can get your very own copy at the following link:

https://archive.org/details/TheFeminineRegime

Having finally had the opportunity to read the complete book, I was surprised to discover that The Feminine Régime was as much a lady-to-maid book as a spanking book. For this reason, I suggest that those who frequent this blog consider adding it to their reading list.

How Would You Like to Be the Maid?

Courtesy of Summertime's wonderful blog. I always knew that lady-to-maid fantasies were very popular in the Victorian and Edwardian period. Now I have proof. This has to be the world's first known lady-to-maid caption!

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Duchesses Becoming Maids: A Short Essay

By T. H. Enerdly

In 1889, Crown Prince of Austria Rudolph committed suicide together with his mistress, Baroness Mary Vetsera, an event known as the Mayerling incident, Mayerling being the Imperial hunting Lodge, the scene of the incident.

A few years ago, while reading an account of this incident in the book A Nervous Splendor by Frederick Morton, I chanced upon the following interesting observation about the Baroness:

“She knew it wouldn't do to arrive at costume balls as a Bourbon princess (accountants' wives were known to do that). Instead she’d come as a saucy chambermaid (the favorite disguise of duchesses).”

If one occasionally writes lady-to-maid stories as I do, one's interest cannot help but be piqued by a quote such as the one above. I immediately began researching duchesses who liked to wear chambermaid costumes…but found nothing. Every year or so since I first read the quote, I've tried to find more information, but have been disappointed every time.

Recently, I've tried a different approach. I decided to search for an image of a duchess wearing a chambermaid costume. Much to my delight, I found such an image on Pinterest, the one accompanying this essay. The Pinterest posting did not contain much information: Merely a couple of sentences that identified the subject as Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna and noted that she was wearing a masquerade costume, probably “chambermaid.”

My first thought, when viewing the image, was that it must be difficult to dance a waltz while holding a lit candlestick. But, with the image, I now more or less had confirmation that duchesses sometimes wore chambermaid outfits to costume balls. This was a place where I could start some actual research.

There is an article about Elena in the Wikipedia. She is described as having had a “grand manner” and a rather nasty temper, which, by the way, are not ideal character traits, either for a unmarried Grand Duchess or a maid. She is reputed to have had an offer of marriage, later withdrawn, from Archduke Ferdinand, the fellow whose assassination sparked World War I, an event some historians believe was a knock-on effect set in motion by the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolph. Failure to marry the Archduke probably was wonderful for Elena’s longevity, given that the man who assassinated Ferdinand also killed the latter’s wife. Elena ended up marrying Prince Nicholas of Greece, her only suitor, presumably because other potential suitors were unenthusiastic about her “grand manner” and temper.

Story: Russian Art

Dear all, I am sorry for the long absense, I'll try to make it up to you in coming weeks and months with new content. Please also remember that I am really dependant on you for ideas and suggestions so if you've come across interesting stories or links, please do not hesitate to drop me a line or comment here. 

Today I wanted to share with you a short story that, to some degree, influenced my interest in lady-to-maid and downgrade fiction. Apologies to early readers of my newsletter as I’ve already shared it with them, but I think it’s worth posting it to the blog as well. It’s a bit different and some of you might say “huh?” after you read it, but, I think you will notice some themes there that I’ve used in Her Most Remarkable Performance. The story is by Arkady Averchenko, a Russian turn-of-the-century playwright and satirist, whose skyrocketing career was cut short by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which forced him to flee the country. I don’t believe his work has ever been translated into English (at least not this story) so the translation of this short piece from 1922 is by yours truly. Huge thanks go to Robyn Hoode, who did an excellent job editing.

Russian Art takes place in Constantinople, which in the early 1920s was a major destination for Russian refugees (Averchenko himself being one of them) following the final defeat of the Whites in late 1920. The city was overrun with former aristocrats, military officers, government officials, politicians, journalists, and other unlucky souls that bet on the wrong horse during the Civil War. Needless to say, the vast majority of these people were struggling financially and often had to do the jobs that were well beneath them - as doormen, cleaners, shop attendants, guards, maids, cabmen etc. Some of you might be familiar with Anatole Litvak’s famous 1937 comedy Tovarich about two Russian aristocrats working as a maid and a butler under false identities in France (see photo). So, at least some Edwardian beauties had to go through a scary real-life lady-to-maid scenario.

Russian Art

"Is it really, you?" 

"It really is" 

“I can hardly believe my own eyes.” 

“It would be a crime not to believe eyes as beautiful as yours.” 

One has to be a man of highest society and utmost elegance to pay compliments like this during an afternoon in Pera, as hundreds of people are rushing past, constantly bumping into your sides and back. ... and this is what I am indeed. 

The owner of the beautiful eyes, a renowned dramatic actress from Saint Petersburg, was standing before me, her lively, sly, expressive face changing constantly from surprise to pleasure to delight to confusion and back again as I watched. 

“Listen, The Simple-Minded. I really would like to see you. You are like my good old and dear Saint Petersburg come back to me. Come for a cup of tea.”

A Poetry Break: 'No Place for White Hands'

On the Road (1845), a short poem by writer Nikolay Nekrasov, is considered a classic of Russian poetry. When it comes to lady-to-maid plots in Victorian-era literature this is probably as best as it gets. Not unlike "tragic octoroon" stories in the United States around the same time, this is more of a biting comment on class disctinctions, society injustice, and serfdom than anything else,

However, I can't help but think that the inherent eroticism of the main character's social and cultural downfall from a noble lady to a bondmaid was not lost on contemporary readers.

I did not know there was a very good English translation of this poem until I stumbled upon a collection of Nekrasov's work published by Delphi Classics.



On the Road

'Is this wearisome road without end?
I am sick of the grey desolation!
Sing a song for me, driver, my friend,
Of recruiting, of long separation,
Make my laugh by some legend of old,
Speak of what thou has seen or been told,
Think of something, I pray, to relieve me...'
'I too, sir, am troubled, believe me:
I am cursed with a venomous wife:
It's like this; the first part of her life
She was petted and spoilt by the gentry,
To the barin's own house she had entry;
Why, she lived with the barin's own daughter,
And all manner of learning they taught her,
Such tricks as for nobles are fit:
How to read, play the harp, sew and knit.
And her clothing was not what one sees
On the women and girls of the peasant:
They must deck her in silk, if you please,
And her food was abundant and pleasant:
Milk and honey and kasha, galore,
"Eat your fill, there will always be more..."
And she looked so majestic and grand
That a serf-girl you'd never have thought her -
But a lady of rank in the land,
Why, a marriage a gentleman sought her,
('Twas the coachman who told that to me)
Her happiness, though, was not granted;
"Wed a slave to a noble!" quoth she,
"In your circles such ware is not wanted."
'Well, the barin's young daughter got wed,
And the marriage took place in the city,
Then the barin fell sick, more's the pity,
And on Trinity eve he lay dead.
So protector than Grousha had none,
In a month the new heir showed his hand,
He recounted the serfs one by one,
Re-adjusted the taxes and land,
Then of Grousha bethought him as well,
And what happened there no-one can tell, -
Did she vex the new master or no,
Did it seem to him best she should go,
Did he reckon the manor too small
To house Grousha along with them all....

First Ever Lady-to-Maid Film From 1897!

After the Ball (1897), a silent short directed by Georges Méliès, is often credited as the first "erotic" film ever made or, more accurately, the earliest known movie to show (simulated) nudity. However, the way the "maid" looks at the camera around the 1:00 mark and the whole set-up, how quickly the "lady" must undress, strongly suggests they are on to something! Could it possibly be lady-to-maid roleplay? I'd certainly like to think that!

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Story: Cinderella, Humble, Haughty Child

This short story was recommended to me by T.H. Enerdly. It comes from a 1999 book called "Inverted Odysseys" (affiliate link), which, among other things, includes this "pervered" version of Cinderella written by the Surrealist artist and photographer Claude Cahun.

Strictly, this is not a lady2maid story, but comes pretty close, suggesting themes of self-imposed downgrade. I hope it's to your liking.

“She let fall one of her glass slippers,

which the Prince carefully picked up.”

Perrault

My father remarried and I was very happy about it all. I’d always dreamed of having a stepmother. But heaven overwhelmed me, giving me two sisters by marriage. They were deliciously cruel. I especially loved the elder, who despised me delightfully: When she saw me always sitting in the cinders by the fireplace, whose warmth penetrated me with delight (sometimes even burning me), did her dear familiar voice not call me Kitchenella? Never was a word so sweet to my ears.

Sadly, they were pretty girls, marriageable maidens; they left us soon, leaving me with my parents, who, devoted to one another, regarded the world with a drunkard’s tenderness—and included me in their superb universal indifference. I will do anything to avoid a marriage like that . . . But how would I do it? I with my loving nature, and so submissive? . . .

Victorian "Class Crossing"

During one of the discussions in this blog recently, I jokingly suggested that there could be a scholarly paper or a Ph.D. about lady-to-maid transformation plots, possibly written by a woman fascinated with the topic. Guess what? I've come across something approximating that - an article titled "Campaigns of Curiosity: Class Crossing and Role Reversal in British Domestic Service, 1890-1950" by Lucy Delap. You can download the full paper in pdf format here. Large part of it, as the title suggests, is devoted to Elizabeth Banks's 1894 book that we've discussed here already, but it also contains a lot of other examples of men and women willingly crossing the boundaries of class, which, in many cases, meant joining the domestic stuff. Here are some interesting cases mentioned in that paper (which is very worth reading in full if you are interested in the topic):

-- The American journalist Nellie Bly had undertaken undercover work in the United States to investigate child and sweated labour from 1885, and the participation of women in this style of journalism, as well as in philanthropic work that required impersonations, became well established on both sides of the Atlantic.

-- Beatrice Potter disguised herself as a Jewish “trouser-hand” in 1888, and claimed that this gave her investigation into sweated labour extra validity. She claimed both invisibility and empathy as the positive products of her disguise, and declared herself to be “surprised at the complete way they have adopted me as one of their class.”

In Cap and Apron: A Real Story of Going Undercover as a Victorian Maid

It is no secret that Victorians were fascinated by domestic servants. It was a forbidden, yet incredibly appealing world that was studied and observed by the upper classes much like the ethnographers in the period were studying native tribes in Africa or the Americas. And just like the best way to understand a foreign culture was working in the field, often for an extended period of time and, not infriquently, completely going native and embracing that culture as your own, the best way to undersand what it meant to be a servant was becoming one, joining the working classes.

One such student of the working classes was Elizabeth L. Banks, an American journalist, who spent most of her adult life in England. She wrote extensively on lives of poor women - maids, washerwomen, street sweeps, flower girls - and built her career as a critic of Victorian-era British class society. Her method was going undercover among the low classes to investigate their living conditions, habits and opinions, creating a sensation in 1890s London as one of the pioneers of stunt journalism. Her adventures in disguise often led to hilarious, clash-of-cultures results, but also offered a unique look into the lives of the late Victorian working classes. Banks first published her detailed accout of life as a domestic servant, appropriately called In Cap and Apron, in the Weekly Sun in 1893. It was republished in full the following year as part of her collection titled  Campaigns of curiosity, which also included her impersonating an American heiress seeking to marry an English lord and a Covent Garden flower girl.

Maids: Korean TV drama (2015)

I've been alerted to "Maids", a TV drama set in medieval Korea, a while back by a reader of this blog, but it's only recently that I've found time to take a look at the first few episodes. I've already mentioned the strange fascinations that most East Asian nations, including Korea, have with maids and servants. Maids are mainstays of fashion magazine spreads - for example, Vogue Korea  or Vogue Japan. There is the odd phenomenon of "maid cafes", where waitresses are dressed like French maids. There is even, as I've recently discoved, a Japanese girl band appropriately called Band-Maid, whose members are always dressed as maids, even though they play hard rock.

So it was hardly a surprise for me that Koreans would make a TV series with a plot made for Ladies Becoming Maids blog.

How was your day, fallen aristocratic lady?

One of my favorite authors, T.H. Enerdly, pointed me to an interesting account that, while not exactly a lady-to-maid story, is nonetheless very interesting. While we wait for updates of Molly, China story, as well as a new piece from Jackie J, here is a short real life downgrade tale of an aristocratic lady that has lost the wealth and the status that used to go with her title:

Bourgeois, as usual. Boring and tiring. Each morning when I wake up to go to work I can’t help cursing my own fate. I still can’t believe it: How did I get to this point? My family dates back to the 13th-century French Angevin kings’ invasion of Sicily but has devoured its entire fortune. I was left with nothing as heredity, just a pair of wooden chairs. The only sign of nobility is the blue blood running in my veins.

Not much, eh? And my aristocratic title? A piece of paper. When I turned 24, my earl dad looked me straight in the eye and told me I had to find a job. I am the first of my lineage to work for a living, and it’s not even great work. I occasionally teach Italian at a local high school. Salary? Not even $1,000 per month..

But what I can’t stand is what I do each day and what my mother, let alone my grandmother or great-grandmother, would have never lowered down to: household chores. Cleaning the house, buying groceries, getting the washing machine going, cooking twice a day, ironing — oh, I hate that! Paying bills and running a household is just not part of my DNA.

Finally A Guide to Becoming a Perfect Maid!

As I've stated before, I am a big fan of Victorian-era etiquette and household management manuals. There are many such books that can be found online and some of them allow us to understand better what life was really like for a servant back in the day. And I am not even talking about the many daunting duties performed without the help of modern appliances such as a vacuum cleaner or a diswasher. There existed a great divide between a mistress and her maid - in manners, in speech, in dress, in life aspirations - and these guidebooks often played an important role in securing these divisions by making sure that each side was fully aware of their different stations in life and acted accordingly.

There is no shortage of books addressed to the lady or the housekeeper, but a book whose primary reader is supposed to be a maid is hard to find. It was therefore with great pleasure that I discovered this 1859 gem titled "The servant's behaviour book or hints on manners and dress for maid servants in small households". The author, "Mrs. Motherly", refers to her readers throughout as "my dear girls", leaving little doubt that the book is addressed to a young woman aspiring to become a good maidservant. Upon reading the book and remembering its many lessons a girl will emerge as a "well-behaved and agreeable servant'', making it far more likely for her to secure a better position as her domestic career advances. Who knows, may be with time she will even become a lady's maid at one of London's aristocratic mansions! Oh, the excitement!

This short book contains a traditional list of behavior tips that can be found in many such books. They can be summarized as follows:

How Vulgar: Maids and Their Low-Class Speech

I have to admit it: I am a fan of old etiquette books and household-management manuals. There is no shortage of them online and they offer an interesting glimpse into the life that is long gone. Even though I have a sneaking suspicion that much of what is in these books has little relation to real attitudes and behaviors, it is not hard to imagine a social climber of the time actually reading these manuals to learn how to dress, walk and talk like a real lady, or an inexperienced wife learning how to interact with her household staff. Or a lady's maid learning a thing or two about how to serve her mistress best.

One particular aspect of the social downgrade transformation I have always found exciting was adopting a coarser and less educated manner of speech typical of the lower classes. Our speech is as much a part of us as the way we look and is, arguably, even more important in determining how we are perceived by people around us. That makes it a powerful instrument in describing a social drop or rise. While most stories dealing with upper/lower class transformation ignore the topic or only mention it in passing, there are some excellent examples of writers paying a great deal of attention to that. Emma Finn's writings, in particular Criminal Record, come to mind. Monica Graz's Domestication of a Parisian Bourgeois is another excellent example: the main character actually learns how to speak with a coarse Portuguese accent to fully embrace her immigrant maid persona. Another great example, offering the most painstaking description of learning how to speak like a low-class character I have come across, is "A Certain Perception'' by Angel Charysse. While the story doesn't deal with maids, its description of the voluntary change from an upper-class man into a dirty-talking and uncultured transsexual hooker is among the hottest (as well as most detailed) in transformation fiction.

Maids in Old Advertising

My collection of maids in vintage newspaper and magazine advertisements. Once a popular theme, it has almost entirely disappeared in the post-WW2 world.