Working Guests

There are columns of print by experts advising guests and hostesses on how to behave toward each other with tolerance. They contain hints and reminders – they abound in fabulous invitors and invitees. Although there are planning charts and menus to make the single-handed hostess carefree and leisured, the conspiracy to simulate the good old days of silent service for relaxed guests more often produces instructions for rehearsed teamwork on the part of husband and wife to make it seem that a bevy of pixies flits around doing the background chores. There was one article, so orthodox in its ‘gracious living’ that it told how to evade offers of aid on household projects.

That isn’t the way I want it or the way I do it, and I’ve devoted four years of research and practice to getting all my friends to do all the work. There is scarcely a thing, in or out of sight, from the woodpile to the attic water tank, from the chair coverings to the brined pork and the contents of the deep freeze, without the signature of a working guest.

Since most of the visitors sleep all the morning, and I’m siesta-minded after lunch, it takes dove-tailed planning to keep industry on its feet. The visitors’ book is flanked by a photo album of grim significance: in it are no ‘happy hols’ snaps of leisured groups wearing sun-glasses and sniffing Pimm’s Cup. It could easily be taken for a set of stills from a Soviet workers’ propaganda film. Everyone is busy doing a job: Joy through Work.

This catalogue of ‘merry workers’ is designed to instil confidence in newcomers and manual morons who can herein see some butter-finger acquaintance doing highly-skilled work; to show the variety and scope of the projects, and to suggest social ostracism of drones and sit-down-strikers.

The mildest: ‘Can I do anything to help?’ is, to my mind, a contract to work. ‘If you only had another of those little gadgets, I could help you peel... (slice... re-cover... stamp... whatever)’. This is the gambit I’m hoping for, and not only is there at least always one more tool like it, but two or three other gadgets for the later processes. An uncaptive guest who wonders what’s happened to another and wanders into the orbit of work finds himself press-ganged. Thus an assembly line is born! – ideal for such jobs as picking, slicing and salting away runner beans or preparing a bumper crop for the deep freeze, sandwiches for a point-to-point meeting, and cake icing.

The assembly line has its attraction in companionship and the discussion of art, politics and Pools. There is inspiring technical shop-talk of right- or left-handed manoeuvres, but what is important from my point of view, besides the accomplishment of essential tasks, is that the victim is conditioned to labour and henceforth searches for peace and entertainment in occupational therapy. For this, there are graded opportunities of creative effort, in partnership, competition or as a lone artisan.

There is really no trouble getting a hand in the kitchen: it’s the centre of the house. Our housekeeper, Paula, and my son’s nurse, Patsy, are welcoming and waiting to hear the latest on everyone’s life and adventures since their last visit. Romances, wardrobes, murder trials and political iniquities are thrashed out in the kitchen, while four cats try to snitch unwatched delicacies, Heather the labrador hogs the kitchen floor and the new kittens from the box under the table squeak for attention. The well- conditioned guest will automatically reach for a handful of scalded broadbeans and start slipping off the skins, relieve someone at the butter churn, turn mushrooms or spread canapés without even noticing the action and often forgetting to remove coat or hat, so furious is the pace of gossip.

Nearly everyone hankers to try his hand at another’s job if only to try anything once. There is always someone at hand who has the ‘know-how’ and a queue of characters who are curious to know how themselves. We’ve had impromptu courses in pruning, furniture finishing and glazing... there’s nothing the working guests haven’t done. Teamwork produced the blue nursery rug with the cow jumping over the moon, the lined curtains, the draught-proofing of the windows. Prominently displayed is the work of individual designer-craftsmen... window seats, a draped dressing table, felt appliqué footstool covers and patchwork cushions for rocking chairs. The reworked covers of grandma’s moth-eaten gros-point chairs are masterpieces.

Temperamentally, the W.G.s are roughly divisible into two groups: those who like semi-automatic work (not necessarily sedentary) which leaves them free from the neck up, to think, talk or listen, and those who prefer to have their minds on the job in order to avoid those same activities. It is advisable to stimulate the latter by giving them assignments just within reach of their experience and to make increasing demands on their capacity so as to attain peak production before the visit is over. No task offered should be so tedious, frightening or back-breaking that the guest becomes a dull fellow at dinner or contemplates refusing to return for a refresher course another time.

We’re now in the last years of the first ‘Five Year Plan’ on the farm. Already I’m calculating the second. A vineyard should be started – it would be producing enough by the end of five years to give its own vital encouragement to the working guests for its annual upkeep. The real dream is a great wall in bay-forming curves, like at Monticello; after all, a great many people have had bricklaying as a hobby.

In the meantime, all inhabitants of the woodpile are going to be put to chopping and carrying... The rotten things in the state must ferment the compost heap, and as for those Lilies of the Field, since they won’t do anything else at all but be considered, they’ll be moved up to a nearby border where they can be considered by the working guests, without interruption of their work.

^{Lee Miller, Tate Britain, until 15 February 2026}

^{A longer version of this article was first published in the July 1953 edition of British Vogue (pages 54–7, 90–2). A copy of the original magazine is included in the exhibition, Lee Miller. Reprinted courtesy of Lee Miller Archives.}

^{Supported by the Lee Miller Exhibition Supporters Circle, Tate International Council, Tate Patrons, Tate Photography Acquisitions Committee, Tate Americas Foundation and Tate Members. The media partner for Lee Miller is The Independent.}