211. A portrait of The Lady
How not to engage domestic staff.
In which Rebecca – with apologies to Henry James for the title of this post – bids farewell to a uniquely British publication and looks back at a job interview.
The Lady, Britain's longest-running women's magazine, has formally announced that it has ceased publication.
The magazine is famed for its etiquette advice, adverts for butlers and nannies and discreet liaisons with well-heeled 60-somethings.
The above text was taken from this BBC News article published on April 16, 2025.
Dear Reader,
I’d first come across The Lady in the early 1990s in the home of a family whose kids I would sometimes look after at weekends. I’d found it a hoot, crammed as it was with features about how to train a gun dog, advertisements for tweed skirts, silk scarves and gentlemen’s striped nightshirts, and, in the Appointments section of the classified ads, the kinds of job descriptions you might see filled by characters from Downton Abbey or one of Christie’s Miss Marple novels. Teenage Rebecca found these hilarious.
Last week in the name of research I got hold of a copy of the magazine from 2023, and found this advert (which I have edited to protect the innocent) to be fairly typical of the kinds of domestic positions being advertised:
Housekeeper for a friendly working couple. We are an easy-going small family, frequently travelling. Duties include general household upkeeping and maintenance, tidying, ironing, occasionally cooking healthy meals, sweeping the garden, car cleaning. Any skills will be a bonus and can sway the decision: help with homework, driving, excellent cook, ability in sports, massage, languages, mending, repair skills.
Although I wasn’t strictly his PA, the CEO of the company I used to work for called me ‘his’ secretary. As well as undertaking tasks necessary for business operations to run smoothly I was also responsible for organising various matters relating to his personal life.
I would book his sessions with his fitness trainer, collect his cigars from Davidoff in St James’s Street, and make table reservations for his showy-offy lunches at the Savoy Grill. One morning in the office I gathered that I was also expected to get involved with engaging his domestic staff.
When I joined the firm, his household had a nanny to take care of the three smallest children, and there was a ‘daily’ who dealt with the cleaning, shopping and laundry. As life had become busier – the company was growing, and so were the kids – priorities changed, and the boss told me that he and his wife had decided to employ two live-in staff in the form of a housekeeper and a driver/handyman/gardener.
‘You need to put an advert in The Lady!’ said my boss, flinging a copy of the latest edition onto my desk on his way out of the office one lunchtime. ‘Look at the ads for domestics and just rewrite one of them. It needs to be a couple: the wife is to be the housekeeper, and her husband will do everything else.’
He paused.
‘Obviously.’
I was happy to learn that such gender-specific appropriation of tasks was not in the slightest bit – to quote my boss – obvious to the person in charge of booking classified advertisements for The Lady.
‘I’m afraid you can’t possibly word it like that’, she told me on the phone. ‘We promote equal opportunities, and we don’t distinguish roles by sex like that. You need to say ‘Couple required: one to work as housekeeper, the other as driver/handyperson/gardener.
I was relieved. ‘Of course!’ I said. ‘Thank you!’ I told her I’d ring her back once I’d run my rewritten text past my boss.
‘I want a woman to work in the house, and for her husband to do the outside stuff!’ he told me with a snort.
I coughed in reply. ‘Erm, also...’ I muttered, ‘…I don’t think you can specify in the advert that the two of them have to be actually married....’
He snorted even louder as I tiptoed back to my desk.
🤷♀️
In time, a couple got in touch in response to the ad.
‘Get them to come in for an interview’, my boss told me.
‘At home? Let me check with Mrs B for dates you’re both going to be there.’
‘No, don’t waste her time at this stage. Get them to come and meet you for an informal chat, and after you’ve told me what you think they can come in again for me to take a look at them, and then if they’re any good at all they can come to the house to meet Mrs B and talk to her.’
I was aghast. How on earth was I supposed to judge whether applicants for domestic roles in my boss’s home might be suitable?
‘You only have to meet them, Rebecca.’ My boss sighed. ‘Just tell me what they’re like.’
The couple came in to see me the next week while my boss was away on business. Neither batted an eyelid about being interviewed – however informally – by naïve 24-year-old office Rebecca for live-in roles working for a large family in their country house over sixty miles away.
The lady did all of the talking. Her husband had shaken my hand firmly on arrival, said ‘hello’ in a very loud voice, clicked his heels and beamed widely. His smile remained for the entire time we were together, and he nodded enthusiastically in response to everything I said.
‘Wow’, I thought. ‘Not being chatty, he’s going to get on really well with Mr M.’
Reader, they were delightful. Once the housekeeper-to-be and I had rounded off our side of the conversation, I began to ask her husband about his gardening experience and driving history. ‘Do you enjoy working outside?’ I asked. ‘Oh, and how much experience do you have driving Range Rovers and Bentleys?’
He looked at his wife, who answered me. ‘Oh, he loves gardening, and drives any kind of car. Clean licence, no accidents, no nothing.’
I looked back at the smiling chap. ‘Great!’ I said.
‘Great!’ he repeated.
As they left, his unfaltering smile leading their way out of the office and towards the lift, his wife turned back to me and thanked me for my understanding.
‘My understanding?’ I was confused.
‘Yes. Potential employers don’t usually like that J doesn’t really speak English.’
When it was established in 1885 The Lady was described as ‘…a magazine for gentlewomen, a weekly guide to navigating the social minefield of well-to-do British life.’
Yet Reader, I never did quite work out how to navigate the social minefield of my job.
Love,
Rebecca
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I do hope they got the job 😁😁 As usual a lovely article this week Rebecca. I am now going to search out The Lady. It was never on my reading list. Although I think it may have been on my Mother’s. 😁😘
We don't have any magazines like that in Canada. The closest thing to it would be "Chatelaine", the chief publication for women, but it's focused more on the middle class than the uppers...