"some people don't like the idea of servants, but it was a different age,"
My mother was in service, a fairly high echelon housekeeper, and I was brought up in servants' quarters.
We found it a reasonable life, with respect on both sides, and lot's of advantages to a small boy.
Imagine being able to spend your holidays in Albany, no, not the Isle of Wight, but the one in Piccadilly!
Imagine the freedom to roam over a whole estate, perhaps not quite as big as Woburn, but of that sort of order, not open to the public in those days, with a salmon river, woods farms gamekeepers who knew every nest, sett and drey in the woods.
Imagine being able to eat as many apples, pears, plums etc as you liked (though not peaches, they were reserved for the "house" though I was normally allowed, once a year, to pick one for myself. )
Imagine being able to visit London Zoo as the "family" of a Fellow of the Zoological Society (servants were regarded as "family" in those innocent days" when the zoo was closed to the public and the staff knew that any visitor was "related" to a major benefactor.
There were restrictions and conventions of course, but they became almost second nature, If I walked through the village with my mother for instance, there were some people to whom I would raise my cap as we approached, but there were others to whom I did not raise my cap until after they had raised theirs to my mother, and she would have been absolutely mortified if I ever got it wrong either way (if I was not with my mother as a small boy I would raise my cap to everybody, that was also understood!).
I don't think, all in all, we found it a bad life.
