AMONG MILLIONAIRES

Evening Star, Issue 21005, 20 January 1932, Page 13

AMONG MILLIONAIRES

THE GLAMOUR OF LIFE TEA AND KIPPERS. When I got my job as social secretary all my friends were envious. 1 got a large salary and lived in luxury. My employer’s house was a mansion surrounded by miles of parkland and lawns made like velvet by the patient toil of a thousand years. Inside everything was beautifully ancient and yet practically modern, writes one in a London journal. There were great halls and galleries, adequately heated, panelled bedrooms each with its tiled Bathroom. I was given my own maid, and each morning breakfast came up on a dainty tray, with my favourite newspaper. Like the house guests, I was supplied with jars of bath salts. In winter a fire was always burning in my room. Every piece of linen in the house was used but once, which means that the weekly household wash often contained as many as three hundred articles. There were twenty-five indoor servants, eight cars with a chauffeur apiece, and six horses. If I wanted to take a drive or do an errand I had only to telephone for a car. CHAMPAGNE EVERY EVENING. Champagm- was served every evening for dinnei, even when the family was alone, and I could share it. Cigarettes and cigars were placed about the rooms in abundance, and every new magazine coula be found on the library table. There was a private golf course in the grounds, six tennis courts and two squash courts, all of which I was at liberty .to use. Yet., much as T have always loved luxury and the things that money can buy, I had not been there two weeks before I could say from my heart: “Thank heaven, 1 am not rich!”

My work consisted of paying the servants, going ovei the household and estate accounts and keeping them within reasonable bounds, making a fourth at bridge (at a pound a hundred!), sending cut and arranging dinnei invitations, employing new servants, sacking unsatisfactory ones, dancing with house party guests, and generally trying to oil the household wheels.

The first thing I discovered about rich people, especially those who have quickly acquired their wealth, is that they are apt to be suspicious that everyone is cheating them. They have, I admit, ample grounds for this fear, as they often have few real friends. Their 'guests are usually there to enjoy the luxuries of the place, their employees are sometimes out for what they can get, and everyone they meet seems to be on the make. RAMPANT EXTRAVAGANCE.

I was shocked and dismayed at the pilfering and polite cadging that went on in that establishment. Guests, who would sneer openly at their host, were not above filling their cases witli his expensive cigara, and even bringing down several weeks’ washing to be dumped in the estate laundry. Words failed to describe the rampant extravagance that went on in the kitchen and butler’s pantry. I managed bring down the bills from £BOO to £6OO a month, and was congratulated on that performance. Money was the keynote of all these people’s lives, and it seemed to taint every thought and action. It destroyed family affection and social contacts. It they consulted a doetbr, a lawyer or a decorator, they became afraid that they were exploited, so broke away before any of these people were give i a fair trial. They trusted no one and feared everyone, because the old bugbear money kept thrusting its way. in. TEA AND KIPPERS. . If only, I often thought, these people lost every penny, how many people would keep faith with them? Continual chopping and changing, the breaking of agreements caused by this general distrust, made my job a difficult one. I was surrounded by arguments and quarrels. I was made a go-between in all this unpleasantness that could easily have been avoided by a little simple faith on both sides. Although my salarv was a large one I felt that I earneJ every penny of it. As for the luxury, the champagne tested flat and the hothouse peaches stale, and I often thought longingly of my little sitting room with a few genuine friends round a supper of kippers and teal