Domestique Oblige

By R.Z. Sheppard

ROSE: MY LIFE IN SERVICE by ROSINA HARRISON 237 pages. Viking. $8.95.

Servants of a dead pharaoh were sometimes sealed in the tombs with the royal remains so that they could cater their master's needs in the hereafter. There may have been a more worldly reason as well: entombed servants could not publish their memoirs. Had the dynasties lasted as long as the pyramids, the world might have been spared the reminiscences of Eisenhower's butler, Jacqueline Kennedy's White House cook and, most recently, the man who changed the light bulbs and walked the dogs for Lyndon Johnson.

Rose: My Life in Service is a cut above such backstairs trivia. Rosina Harrison of Yorkshire was 30 years old when she became Lady Astor's personal maid in 1929. Her salary was about $300 a year, plus room, board and entertainment. There was plenty of the latter before Rose retired at Lady Astor's death in 1964. The lady had been born Nancy Langhorne of Danville, Va., the spirited daughter of a horse auctioneer. After divorcing her first husband, a Boston sporting man and alcoholic, Nancy took her young son to England. There, in 1906, she married Waldorf Astor. He was the great-great-grandson of John Jacob Astor I, the German immigrant who made a staggering fortune in the American fur trade and New York real estate. His grandson, William Waldorf Astor, a failed conservative politician, took the family name and fortune to England in 1889.

Common Law. The Waldorf seat in the House of Lords and Cliveden, the family mansion, passed to Waldorf in 1919. Nancy not only became a lady but also moved into her husband's vacant seat in Commons. She was the first woman Member of Parliament, where she remained until 1945. An advocate of women's and children's rights, she constantly issued statements on her other enthusiasms: Christian Science, the prohibition of intoxicating beverages and the dangers of Communism and labor unions.

Rose Harrison exhibits a minimal interest in her lady's position in political history. In true Upstairs/ Downstairs tone, she is insufferably proud of knowing her place and downright snobbish about her ignorance. "Before we went to Italy," Rose recalls vaguely, "her ladyship spoke to me and told me not to mention the name Mussolini. I suppose he must have come to power not too long before that time."

In her own bailiwick, however, the maid seems to have sized up the situation perfectly. Between the lines of froth about clothes, jewels, travel, parties and grand houses, she implicitly lays down the common law: servants, not masters, are frequently the keepers of traditions, institutions and morals. They are rewarded by living high off the leavings of power and opulence.

Rose's self-portrait as the indispensable, blunt-spoken lady's lady has already been authenticated by Nancy Astor's biographers. But Rose's impression that her boss seriously put up with her criticism is less acceptable. It is more likely that by letting Rose sass her, Lady Astor reverted to the practice of some of her Southern slaveholding ancestors who allowed back talk from black mammies as a form of amusement. She was certainly capable of such cruel diversions. Despite Rose's profuse claims of devotion, her book leaves little doubt that she felt Lady Astor was self-centered, tactless, sadistic, incapable of affection, a racial and religious bigot and even an abuser of pets.

Although not vengeful, Rose: My Life in Service has the unmistakable markings of an exercise in British upmanship. A Yorkshire girl is equal--if not superior--to the daughter of a Virginia horse trader.

R.Z. Sheppard

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