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'Manor House'
With Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar
Lady of the Manor and Butler
Tuesday, April 29, 2003; 11 a.m. ET
The scullery maid quits in a huff. The first footman and the hall boy are found passed out on the estate grounds, still drunk from an all-night bender. And just when it seems that things couldn't possibly get any worse, the hall boy and the new scullery maid are caught doing more than the dishes. Such is Edwardian life at
Manderston, a 109-room Scottish mansion, the setting for the latest PBS
"hands-on history" series, "Manor House." Presiding over the young servants are the
no-nonsense butler and the matronly housekeeper. And above them all,
literally and figuratively, is the aristocratic family living a life of
elaborate banquets and balls upstairs.
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Butler, Hugh Edgar
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Lady of the house, Anna Olliff-Cooper, and butler Hugh Edgar were online Tuesday, April 29 at 11 a.m. ET, to discuss the six-part cultural-reality series documenting the experiences of real-life, modern people living in a historic time.
"Manor House" airs on PBS beginning Monday, April 28 for three nights (check local listings).
The transcript follows.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control
over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
Miami Beach, Fla.:
For Mrs. Olliff-Cooper:
Firstly, you look beautiful! (You missed your calling in Edwardian England.)
Presuming that you have seen the program, what was your reaction when you saw what went on "downstairs" to keep you happy and blissful "upstairs," and do you think that you could have managed to trade places?
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Well, I have to say that when I first was interested in this program I didn't see myself as one of the upstairs participants. I couldn't find when I looked through the listings, though, a position I could easily fulfill. I think I could've done one of the downstairs jobs.
Well I'm aware that it was very hard work for them. Of course, but to be perfectly fair it is hard being a junior doctor and a mother with small children and to be a working mother. So I don't honestly feel they have a monopoly on hard work, so I had mixed feelings about it all. I was grateful for what they had done, because we had a marvelous experience. They seemed to think we'd never done any work beforehand, but perhaps that was a compliment.
Silver Spring, Md.:
Mr. Edgar: Charlie seemed to be a hardworking and pleasant gentleman. Were you able to forgive him for his drunken mistake?
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Well, what do you think I did? The only thing I should have done was sack him immediately. In Edwardian times, neither would have stayed. It did go through my mind to sack them. Both had infringed a cardinal house rule and Charlie had compounded that because he was supposed to be in charge in my absence. He betrayed my trust. If you then think that neither of them left, so obviously I had forgiven them. But the two things are different.
Bethesda, Md.:
How much training did you recieve for you respective roles before the show?
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Anna: None at all. I think they wanted to see how we coped just as ordinary people. But they discouraged us from reading up about it. My husband and I both did, though, and it's jolly good we did, but we've always been interested in history and that gave us a general background. The rule book was very slender and only gave you the barest outline of where you were supposed to be. My job was basically to honor my husband at all times.
Hugh: I'm very interested in history so this period was not a total mystery to me. I had Edwardian grandparents and knew the behavior and had seen it in operation. I did apply and started boning up about the period to understand it more fully and when they offered me the job I said I'd accept if I had somebody teach me how to shave someone else with an open cutthroat. So they agreed and I had one day's training. The other thing was that although I'd read a lot about servants and the role of the butler, I said I could do with some training from a real butler. I was extremely lucky and had training for four days from the adviser to "Gosford Park" and that was wonderful because lots of little details I may have overlooked, he made me aware. Apart from that, we weren't encouraged to know very much. But at the end of the day, the producers must have been jolly glad.
Washington, D.C.:
Hello Mrs Olliff-Cooper & Mr Edgar: As a reality style show, you all don't work with a narrative of any kind? That is, there's no dramatization/scenario as in "Upstairs, Downstairs" or "Duchess of Duke Street" or "The Flambards." Wonderfully scripted shows.
But how did you all know when not to mix 21st century routines with 1900s rituals and sensibilities? Were there historians/consultants to guide all of you through protocol and decorums that are historically accurate?
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Anna: No there weren't. Once you knew the three basic things about that life -- where you stood in the heirarchy, which was the be all and end all. You also had to grasp the fact that women were naturally inferior and that children were to be seen and not heard until about 16 or so. Once you grasped that everything fell into place. It just seemed to come naturally. We didn't feel we were living in the 21st century. We took on the way that Edwardian people thought and all behavior followed from that.
Hugh: Falling into pattern as an Edwardian butler was easily, and the Independent and Times hoped I would get my comeuppence for being such a mean old man. So it came very quickly. I also had Edwardian teachers as a boy and lots of people I'd completely forgotten rolled back into my mind. The young ones had a bit of a problem in the beginning and found it a bit hard to find someone like me ordering them all the time, but they too settled down and once they did the house took on a dynamic of its own because everybody kenw their place. Sometimes they would say to me, "Oh, sir, we know you're going to punish us now."
Anna: About halfway through we felt we didn't need production at all, the house could have run forever with sufficient money.
Hugh: It took a dynamic of its own and ran extremely well.
Anna: We'd have been organizing this year's hunt.
Hugh: Of course, production did have a very important role, to document what was going on.
Arlington, Va.:
Mr. Edgar... why do you wear two pairs of glasses?!
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Hugh: In real life I have bifocals so I can always see whatever I'm looking at. I have the problem at the beginning of at the beginning seeing well. Having both spectacles allowed me to see close and far. I stopped because I was coming down the stairs with a tray and fell by looking at a point in two glasses. I broke a few glasses but not the whole tray. So then I stopped doing both glasses.
Northampton, Mass.:
Have either of you found it difficult
returning to your normal lives outside of
the Manor House once the show was
over?
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Anna: I certainly found it very difficult. It took about 18 months to feel I was back in the 21st century. Before that it was quite difficult to adjust to the different ways of life again. It was much more difficult to come back to the 21st century. It was quite distasteful.
Hugh: I'm going to quote the Independent, I slipped in so quickly. Once the program comes to the end, I stepped out of the house and regained myself. My problem was that I had lost a lot of weight. I weighed 60 kilos when I went in and weighed 48 kilos when I came out. I was physically tired. IT took 7 weeks of idleness to get back into my stride.
Columbia, S.C.:
I understand from the website that the "manor house" is actually still a family residence (or at least a wing of it is). Did you have any contact with this family, or did they move elsewhere during the filming?
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Anna: The Palmers, who own it, moved into a wing as part of their contract they weren't to contact us at all. We sometimes saw someone off in the distance, but we didn't speak.
Hugh: Never ever saw -- well, have seen him, but wasn't aware it was the owner of the house. When he came to the servants' courtyard, I turned my back to him.
Burgaw, N.C.:
Mr. Edgar, Do you think that the difficulty some of the downstairs staff had at adapting to the life of an Edwardian servant was caused by the amount of physically hard work or do think that the lack of personal freedom was responsible?
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Hugh: I think foremostly it was the lack of any personal freedom, a rigid discipline -- they were punished for the slightest thing they'd done wrong. They thought it was draconian. If they had known the real punishment they'd have known how sweet I was. One of the problems was one of the totalitarian regime. This was compounded by the sheer hard work. Some of them had never, in my opinion done this. The younger onese hadn't. They really didn't know what had hit them.
Anna: The younger ones hadn't had any hardship.
Hugh: The first scullery maid's mother was her scullery maid. So
Northfield, Ill.:
Were you happy with the way you were portrayed? (so far)
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Hugh: I was, because I took the view all along that whatever I've done and said I can't turn round and say I didn't do it. YOu just see me doing a very small thing. If you knew the beginning and end of that story you might have a different position. But it was valid to cut everything out to make a point.
Anna: I'd agree with that. The Edwardian era aristocracy were high handed and we were trying to be those people and reflect their way of thinking about things. So we too came over high handed and autocratic and I think that their portrayal was fair and balanced.
Hugh: I agree with you.
Anna: We're not quite as high-handed in our 21st century lives.
Oshkosh, Wis.:
First let me say that my husband and I are enjoying the program immensely.
I noticed Mrs. Olliff-Cooper, that in the begining of the first program you were uncomfortable with the role of having servants but by the end of the 2 hour program seemed immersed. Has it been difficult to return to regular life?
For both Ms. Olliff-Cooper and Mr.Hugh Edgar, did the roles give you any insight into your own lives today as well as Edwardian life?
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Anna: Well, the matter of servants did cause me some anxiety. I wondered how it would be, but it wasn't much different from living in a hotel where you have a chamber maid cleaning your room and someone is cooking your food and you don't agonize over that. The house was run effectively like a hotel, so that didn't worry me. What we learned was how very close the relationship with our upper servants can be. I don't regard Mrs. Davis and Edgar as servants so much as partners in running an enterprise. So I regarded them as management.
When I left I said I'd give myself a cleaner, which I still haven't done. In a hotel and in our house you didn't see the chamber maid cleaning your room. In my own house, if I was sitting around while someone else was cleaning I'd have to join in and help.
Hugh: Yes, I think if you don't learn something you've missed the point. Sometimes you don't learn, but you may have doubts and you realize having been through the experience -- I believe in working in partnership with people, working as a team and I believe that we worked as a team downstairs. We did have differences, but ultimately the house ran efficiently. We weren't sabotaging each other. THe relationship between the family -- I think Anna is absolutlely right, you become a manager and get on with the job you have to do. In real life you do the same thing. There are some things you will tell your client and osmethings you don't. You sort out what the client wants you to do.
Boston, Mass.:
Mrs. Olliff-Cooper - keeping in Edwardian character, it seems you saw very little of your youngest son (who is adorable, may I say). Was it terrible seeing him so little? Did he have any friends to visit?
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Anna: Well, again, this really rather shocks me. I would have said before I went that I was very close to my children. But as we absorbed the Edwardian way of life we too began to feel that you didn't bother with your children. They didn't breastfeed (Edwardian women), boys were sent away to school very early. This wasn't a trauma. It was hard for Guy, whose behavior detoriated. We tried having some friends into the house, but you have to remember the house wasn't really ours, so we couldn't have hordes of children around those antiques. Guy didn't find the experience nearly as fun as we did. He was delighted to get back to the 21st century. I think things would have been easier in the real time, we'd have had the vicar's son and the other gentry's sons being educated with him.
New Providence, N.J.:
What modern cheats were you allowed? It looked like the chamber pots weren't really used, for example, and I would think the food was kept in refrigeration. What else?
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Anna: You'd like to think wrong in that case.
Hugh: The chamber pots were used and there were maggots in the meat -- that was thrown away.
Anna: We were only allowed to bring in prescription meds -- otherwise we went into the house with what we stood up in. So no watches, nothing at all. So all the stuff we found there was authentic to the time. But Manderson was renovated to a very high standard.
Hugh: We weren't allowed to used the water closets at night, which is why we used the chamber pots.
Minneapolis, Minn:
Were there any interesting occurences which were not aired on the television program which you wish had been? (cutting three months down into six hours probably left out some interesting things)
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Hugh: Gosh yes, it did. Even for me now, it's hard to try -- I don't have my diary with me. I look at it and think that, but there's no story to it. There's one moment that nobody can see when we're getting ready for church and I see Lady Olliff Cooper come out and I think that she looked like Queen Mary and that was it.
Anna: There are hundreds of little Manderson moments. The first time I saw my sister on her bike and my son in his riding breeches. Lots of tinkling of the clocks. Lots of wonderful moments which couldn't be recorded because they happened in a flash.
Most of the time we just lived our lives. The cameras would just turn up. Every two weeks the production company would organize something like a fete or races or you'll be visiting a local hospital, so those things were organized, but the rest of the time we did what we wanted. We just led our lives exactly as we would have left them.
Hugh: Thank you Anna, you opened up a memory in mind. One evening I walked into the servants' hall and I used to walk about like a mouse, and they were all huddled around a fire and Charlie was reading "Pilgrim's Progress" to them and it was literally a vignette out of Edwardian real life. Magnificent.
Anna: And all of the lovely moments I had with Morrison, my maid.
Washington, D.C.:
Was the cook really as difficult as he came off, and do you think he caused a lot of the turmoil along the younger staff?
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Hugh: I can answer that. WHat you see is the pleasant side of him. He was extremely difficult. He cooked like the gods, but on one occasion he walked out during luncheon and I had to go try to pacify him and he screamed and banged doors and left the house. The only thing I would do is say his name quietly. And at the end of the road, he turned round, insulted me, walked back into the kitchen. And I went up and Sir John asked what the problem was and I said we were having problems with the range.
Anna: In the program it said a real lady would have arranged the menus herself. I tried! He was totally incomprehensible. So after a few days of this, I thought it was easier to let him make him make what he wanted to make.
Hugh: I will also say that he had moments of absolute tenderness when anyone was sick. He would prepare special tisanes and go out and help and the cameras never captured this.
Anna: He was an excellent chef.
Hugh: I still keep in touch with him.
Louisville, Ky.:
I enjoyed the first episode very much, and
look forward to more. Please tell me how much
of your personalities you had to suppress to
take on these roles. Hugh Edgar, was it hard
to keep such a stern demeanor? Anna
Oliff-Cooper, was it difficult to ignore the
lower servants rather than saying
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Anna: No, you don't talk to the lower servants so that wasn't difficult. I remember one occasion -- an Edwardian lady never disagrees with her husband -- I ventured an opinion that didn't match my husband's and he shot me down and I thought I wouldn't put up with that in the 21st century.
Hugh: There is a streak in me that likes discipline and tidiness and for people to be proud of their work, so from that point of view, that is part of my personality. To ignore Ken as I did the first night he came into the house and not let him get water, it upset me terribly. But if he had set the table properly, he would have had water. So no I don't feel sorry about that. I still tell Ken he's sloppy and he accepts it. But I do laugh quite a lot. I think I'm a caring chap, but you'd have to ask the servants about that.
Edison, NJ:
I was wondering if any of the servants slipped out of role to the upstairs folks. I mean if you asked them for something, did they ever say, get it yourself?
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Anna: Absolutely not. No. Obviously there was a lot of disharmony downstairs that we didn't know.
Hugh: There was one incident that I won't describe that wasn't pleasant and eventually I called the person in question in my room and he continued to be unpleasant. He came in another time and I put my hand up and my pointing finger for him to keep quiet and I said we can't run the household like that and I hugged him. Towards the end of the program we were all generally tired, so we had an outburst, so nobody saw it. We sorted it out ourselves like chaps.
Orange City, Fla.:
Do you keep in touch with anyone from the show? Did anyone ever tell Mr Olliff-Cooper that he wore the wrong color vest at the first dinner party? Mrs Olliff-Cooper, you were made for this part. You were very elegant.
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Anna: We certainly keep in touch. Hugh is very good at this. We didn't know the lower servants. We didn't talk to them. We have met them since that time, but we keep in contact with the upper servants because we knew them much better and ended up loving them in a way. We felt very strongly about them. So yes we see Hugh. I'm going up to see Morrison my maid next week. I've been to see Mrs. Davis.
Hugh: Minus three, I keep in touch with everybody. It's not just the odd phone call. Some of them have been home and we've gone out to the theater, I've gone up to their homes. Only yesterday weekend and I was talking of going on a weekend abroad with two of the lower servants. We are interested in one another's well being.
Anna: Not at all. He had problems with the laundry. It was sent out of the house because we didn't have laundry maids. Often the clothes just didn't reappear. So the vest wasn't around, so I don't think he had much choice on that occassion.
Hugh: You mean the waistcoat. In Edwardian times the master of the house wore what he jolly well felt like. I was told about this and I did research it and it was acceptable to wear what he had worn as the master of the house.
Anna: It was up to Edgar to lay out my husband's clothes. It wasn't up to him to bother his little head about these things.
Chevy Chase, Md.:
Why were servants permitted only bath per week? 1905 is so close to the Victorian Age when cleanliness was considered next to godliness.
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Hugh: In Edwardian times the fact that they bathed once a week was cleanliness itself. One thing to remember is that in a majority of houses there was no running water. People had a bath in a tub. In a big family the bathwater would be used more than once. People used water that had already been used. Probably all the boys would bathe first, and the women later. Everybody washed every day and the rule books were quite specific.
Anna: Washing your hair more than once every three months was considered dangerous. Upstairs we had baths whenever we wanted.
Hugh: I had a bath twice a week and that demonstrated my privilege.
Milwaukee, Wis.:
I have more of a comment for Mr. Edgar. I found it wonderful how you would talk about your Grandfather and your memories of him. The most heart felt moment it seemed (so far) was when you realized why your Grandfather had to be the way he was.
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Hugh: My grandfather was a disciplinarian, he was an Edwardian. He didn't really speak to us as children. He'd ask you a question and you had to answer exactly what he had asked -- if you tried to prolong the answer he would shut you up. That's why he was a great source of inspiration. He was a doctor by profession, very educated, but I virtually never exhanged any words with him.
Haymarket, Va.:
Did either of you implement any activity or ritual that you observed in your time in Edwardian England to your present day way of life?
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Hugh: Yes, I button my jackets differently now because it is far more comfortable to do so.
Anna: I've changed the way I wear my hair. I've kept it in the Edwardian style -- the upswept lines counteract the res of the lines starting to sag. IT's a modification.
Alexandria, Va.:
Mr Edgar,
What is the origin of your accent? I'm having trouble placing it in the world.
Cheers.
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Hugh: Well, if you go to Scotland you'd find out very quickly where the accent was from.
Washington, D.C.:
Do you find it disturbing at all that people adjusted so quickly to their newly appointed place in society? Growing up in America, we didn't have the same sort of generational aristocracy and class issues that england has had for centuries. Quite frankly, I found it rather frightening that "normal" people embraced their appointed Edwardian place in society so completely, particularly the family "upstairs".
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Anna: yes, I think it was a real shock how quickly you adapted. It made me realize how much of my own behavior is related to where you find yourself in history. If I'd been born in Roman era I would have watched gladiators and in Carolina I'd have watched negroes being discriminated against. It takes a brave person to stand outside a peer group and say I don't agree with us. They chose us because there were elements of our personalities they thought would fit in with Edwardian society. In that era, it was acceptable to be high-handed and autocratic.
Hugh: I'm very fortunate in that I've lived in lots of different countries, some of them with very unsavory governments. YOu get on with it becuase it's theo nly thing you can do. I think people like you who live in a free country and have never suffered a dictatorship, you have no idea what happens to people, but it happens. I was frightened of my part. I would think that I can't abuse the power.
Dallas, Tex.:
Sir Edgar,
I was immensely touched by the quiet emotion displayed by you when you found Charlie and Kenny passed out near the lake. I didn't miss the tear running down your cheek when relating how your grandfather once had been. I can't see how you could have acted any other way but to crack down on the male staff. I would like to commend you on being such a wonderful father figure to the staff, it seems they had no concept what manual labor is.
My question, without asking you to give away any details before the entire series has ended is:
In the end, did the staff appreciate and show gratitude for the discipline you tried to instill in their partaking in such a historical portrayal of the period time?
Looking foward to hearing a reply.
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Hugh: I will only use one word, "Yes." Rob, who found it very hard, said that he actually made it for me in terms that he had understood that. Antonia felt the same and all the ones that have kept in contact, they'd all said that if I hadn't been like that I wouldn't probably have enjoyed it.
Anna: Edgar was the backbone of the house and we had great affection for him.
Hugh: That's mutual.
Toronto, Canada:
Would you like to comment on the class parallels between the roles everyone took on and your actual lives? It seemed so eerily natural that I wondered about the similarities in your real lives.
Anna Olliff-Cooper and Hugh Edgar: Anna: If anyone's out there and wants to apply for anythign like this, leap at the chance but realize it doesn't come pain free. It was a wonderful opportunity.
Hugh: It was very hard work, make no mistake -- but extremely satisfying in many ways.
washingtonpost.com:
Continue this discussion with other "Manor House" viewers in the washingtonpost.com
forums. And tune in tomorrow
at 11 a.m. ET to talk about "Manor House" with the lord of the
manor, Sir John Olliff-Cooper, and kitchen maid Antonia Dawson.
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