Also, no conversation was allowed until after the cloth had been removed, and the health drank. The under butler stands up at the bottom of the table, holds a horn of old ale up in his hands, taps the table twice, and says: ‘My Lord and Lady’ [and] the others reply, ‘With all my heart’. This old custom was observed every day.75
In such a well-run and well-cared for house, the turnover of staff might be slower than in many others:
Servants seldom wanted to leave that place, unless they had been there some time and wanted promotion. I think what kept them together to a great extent was [that] we were allowed a dance on the first Tuesday in every month. The mason who worked on the estate, played the ’cello, his son played second fiddle, the tailor played first violin. I played sometimes as well . . . Our programme consisted of lancers, quadrilles, waltzes, schottisches, polkas, Valse of Vienna, Polka, Mazurka, and country dances . . . I think this sort of thing keeps servants together, makes them just one big happy family.76
Mr Horne enjoyed working here, but as with many junior men-servants he had to move on to find a more senior position. It was during this time that he became more and more disillusioned with his treatment by the upper classes and their unreasonable demands. There was one baronet and MP whom he described memorably as having ‘the brains of a rabbit’. However, he recalled the earl and the castle with unmixed affection.
After going through the daily routine with this Noble family for several years as under butler I thought I would blossom out into a full-blown valet. As I could clean and load a gun, clean a scarlet coat, top boots and leather breeches with the best of them: also I knew about fishing, and what to do on a salmon fishing expedition. Drying the lines, and clothes, etc., ready for the next morning, and dry all the flies that had been used. I felt I wanted to see a bit more of the world before I settled down to the humdrum life of a butler.77
The latter part of his story belongs to another chapter.
Horne’s many-layered career, moving between multiple employers, reminds us of the mobility of the nineteenth-century servant. Whilst staff would usually be recruited by the house steward, or by the housekeeper where there was no steward, the landowner and his wife usually interviewed any prospective personal attendant.78 References or ‘characters’ were all important, but even when the appointment had been made, all might not go to plan.
In the 1840s, Lavinia Jane Watson, the daughter of Lord George Quin, married Richard Watson of Rockingham Castle. Her diaries for the 1840s record just such a case in point. On 1 January 1844, her trusted lady’s maid, Lloyd, was ill, apparently suffering from nerves at having to hand in her notice. ‘Champion [the housekeeper] broke the ice about Lloyd, who wishes to marry Mr Lloyd; and as it incurred her leaving me, she was in low spirits. Had an interview with the bride and comforted her.’79
However, immediately after these affectionate remarks, she expressed her dismay at the character of Lloyd’s replacement, writing on 17 February: ‘My new maid Stephenson arrived on Wednesday, a short old fashioned, mincing body – won’t do.’ By 21 February: ‘Stephenson going.’ On the 23rd: ‘Children well. I with bad cough. Took leave of Stephenson and her humble resigned manner on the occasion almost made me feel a lump, and yet I am sure I have never felt less fascinated by anyone. Champion very good about it altogether.’ This scenario must have been a familiar contest of sensitivity and self-interest.80
Mrs Watson was a close friend of Charles Dickens, who visited Rockingham Castle on several occasions. Old Champion, the housekeeper, is thought by some to have been the model for Mrs Rouncewell, housekeeper in his novel, Bleak House, to Sir Leicester Dedlock at his home of Chesney Wold. She is described in Chapter 7 as ‘a fine old lady, handsome, stately, wonderfully neat . . . It is the next difficult thing to an impossibility to imagine Chesney Wold without Mrs Rouncewell, but she has only been here fifty years.’ Famously, she gives a tour of the house to the visiting Mr Guppy and his friend Walt, with a young gardener opening and closing the shutters, while the visitors are overwhelmed by the size and gloom of the house.
As in the eighteenth century, the recruitment of domestic servants is often mentioned in letters between landowning families. On 3 May 1804, Lady Blount wrote to Francis Fortescue Turvile at Bosworth Hall, Northamptonshire, to say that ‘if she is not yet provided with a House & Laundry maid there is a very good one to be had who was bred up by Lady Clifford . . . & when she went to Igbrooke took [her] with her as under nursery maid where she lived within these two years’. The maid in question had also worked at two other houses where the servants had been discharged when the household was broken up but ‘had given great satisfaction’.81
Goodwood’s house steward, Robert Smith, wrote on 19 May 1858 to Archibald Hair, secretary to the 5th Duke of Richmond, of his problems in finding a new recruit for the still room, using personal recommendations and, presumably, servants’ registries: ‘I have not left a thing undone that I could do about getting a Still Room Maid both Publick and Private but I can find nothing Likely to suit at all – Mrs Sanders would like her to be 30 years of Age and to know Something of cooking and Wages [10 shillings] [but] every body tells me there is nothing of the kind to be had in London.’82
Sometimes, as literacy became more widespread, servants themselves would write in pursuit of a position. One young man, who had had the care of five horses, wrote to offer his services to Sir Henry FitzHerbert: ‘I understand that you are or will be shortly in want of a Groom . . . I have this morning been to Tissington and Johnson the Keeper (who knows me very well) said that I might in all probability get the situation if you were not already suited.’83
References could be less than flattering, as illustrated by this letter from a rector’s wife to Lady Alice Packe, dated 18 April 1887: ‘Dear Lady Alice, I am afraid I cannot answer all your questions quite satisfactorily about Mary Anne Millington. She was certainly very dirty but perhaps with a strict servant over her she might improve. She was only here six months as a kitchen maid & it was her first place. She was good tempered & I believe her to be honest & steady . . . [but she] wanted a proper training.’84
The habit of writing over-positive references for servants whom employers wanted to see move on was a subject of lively debate in the letters page of The Times in August 1879: ‘too many ladies give unwarrantable characters to servants whom they wish to get clear of’.85 Nevertheless a character reference was clearly essential for any future positions. As one butler tartly observed in a letter to the same publication in the same year: ‘At the whim of the master, the servant starves or he lives.’86
The papers of Henry, 4th Earl of Carnarvon, from the 1870s at Highclere include several notes relating to the recruitment of a valet, who might possibly also undertake the role of groom of the chambers.87 They make moving documents, capturing the life of a manservant in a few lines. They illustrate too how mobile servants’ lives were, for even in houses that were comfortable and well run, usually only senior servants would serve for long periods, while younger servants had to move on to get promotion.88
One candidate was an Italian, Bernardo Giannienetti, who was forty, and single; valets were unlikely to be married, given the burdens of the job. He had worked not only for General Fox for eight years, describing the general as a ‘good friend’, but also for the general’s uncle, Lord Lilford, for whom he had been valet and groom of the chambers. He was, however, ‘not accustomed to hunting clothes’, although he did speak five languages, a useful attribute in a valet who accompained his masters on their travels.
Another candidate was George Copsey, aged thirty, who for nine years had been valet to a Mr Stephen Tower of 70 Grosvenor Street and, according to the notes, had worked as a footman but not as a groom of the chambers. He spoke French and a little German, and his last post had been in a commercial situation, for the notes record that he ‘left because not comfortable at hotel’. A last note in red pencil states rather bluntly, in a phrase that echoes down the centuries, ‘Won’
t do.’
More promising was William Pratt, who had been a valet and groom of the chambers to the Duke of Montrose, for six years a footman to the Earl of Mount Edgecumbe, and for three years a valet and butler to Lord March (heir to the Duke of Richmond). Although less of a linguist, he could ‘get anything in French but not converse’. He was, however, ‘used to Hunting and Shooting clothes’, which frequently needed brushing and cleaning overnight. Pratt came from Northamptonshire and was thirty-one. Additional notes remark that he was ‘steady with horses’. A reference or ‘character’ was supplied by Lord March, written direct to Lord Carnavon and dated 11 May 1873: ‘Dear Lord Carnavon, Pratt left me last July since which time he has been living with a lady in Brighton [in service as a footman] and left her to go to Germany but for some reason or other has not gone and came to ask me if I would give him another character. I believe him to be honest, sober and steady, a very good valet and attentive to his master’s needs.’89
The Benyons of Englefield House in Berkshire kept a detailed servants’ book, where every detail of interest was recorded about their recruitment and training. In a parallel to the Carnarvon papers, it includes a list of questions to be put to applicants. For the butler: ‘Where did you live last, and for how long? Why did you leave, and when? What was the establishment, and what were you? This is a regular Family – prayers each morning – punctual – the Plate is under your charge, and you will help clean it – You will lay the Breakfast things, & answer the Drawing Room Bell before 12 o’clock.’90 The master here was unusually involved in the detail of administering the cellar, for he wrote somewhat peremptorily: ‘I keep the key of my own Cellar, & give you out Wine as it is wanted, of w[hi]ch. you keep an account. I order everything, and pay for everything – you order nothing except by my direction. Can you brew? You give out the Ale yourself in a fixed allowance. Can you read and write? Are you married? A Protestant – Healthy – no Apothecaries’ Bills [for bought medicines] no perquisites – how old are you? You will valet me.’91
Many valets had genuinely interesting experiences as valets and travelling companions. William Henry Clifton, who joined the 13th Duke of Norfolk’s service at the age of sixteen in 1851, had become the porter by 1885, and by 1890 was the personal valet to the 15th Duke, whom he accompanied to the Holy Land. His wage, at £80 per annum, was second only to that of the butler. He kept a diary account of his travels in the Middle East with his employer sharing an experience that would have been very unusual for a working-class man in the nineteenth century.
‘We saw the house of Nicodemus it is part now of the monastery. A building was pointed out to us as the house of Tabitha . . . April 20 . . . We stopped at Sarris where we found some tents and lunch all ready laid out on the ground. Some chicken, some mutton and two hard boiled eggs on each plate and some bread and an orange. The place was pointed out where the Ark remained for some 20 years’.92 He also left a memoir of a visit to Spa in eastern Belgium, which includes a reference to his purchase of a French grammar so that he could learn French.93
Great households required careful management, for the very practical reason that security was paramount where expensive commodities and valuable objects were concerned. In a community dedicated to the comfort of the landowning family, it was not unreasonable to regulate the noise generated by comings and goings. Myriad examples can be found in country houses of household regulations, often printed, which read like school or college rules. Perhaps the rule existed because the system was regularly abused, illustrating normal rather than proscribed behaviour.
One example of a typically structured set of household regulations in the nineteenth century can be found at Holkham Hall in Norfolk, giving duties, times of meals, rules about access and entertaining in the servants’ hall:
The porter is always to be in livery, and never to be called away to discharge other duties than those which strictly belong to his office. Outer doors are to be kept constantly fastened, and their bells to be answered by the Porter only, except when he is otherwise indispensably engaged, when the Assistant by his authority shall take his place.
Every servant is expected to be punctually in his/her place at the time of meals. Breakfast: 8 a.m. Dinner 12.45. Tea 5 p.m. Supper 9 p.m. No Servant is to take any knives or forks or other article, nor on any account to remove any provisions, nor ale or beer out of the Hall. No Gambling of any description, nor Oaths, nor abusive language are on any account to be allowed.
No Servant is to receive any Visitor, Friend or Relative into the house except by written order from the Housekeeper, which must be dated, and will be preserved by the Porter and shown with his monthly accounts; nor to introduce any person into the Servants’ Hall, without the consent of the Porter. No Tradesmen, nor any other persons having business in the house, are to be admitted except between the hours of 9 am and 3 pm, and in all cases the Porter must be satisfied that the person he admits has business there. The Hall door is to be finally closed at Half past Ten o’clock every night, after which time no person will be admitted into the house except those on special leave . . .94
This focus on regulation of servants’ lives was also expressed in architecture, with some landowners continually updating their service quaters. The servants’ hall was central to the working areas and staff accommodation at the back of the house, all of which continued throughout the century to be subject to adjustments of architectural thinking. One typical example of early-nineteenth-century planning is Dalmeny in Scotland, designed in 1819 by William Wilkins in a neo-Tudor style, and resembling the famous Norfolk manor house at East Barsham. According to J.P. Neale in Views of Seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen (1825), this comfortable, picturesque house was ‘calculated more for comfort and convenience than show’.
Dalmeny is divided into essentially three ranges, with the private family apartments at one end; the main reception rooms, library, drawing room and dining room in the main portion; and the service rooms and double-height kitchen in the corresponding wing. The pivot of the service wing is the butler’s pantry and plate store with the butler’s bedroom beside it, a common security measure. After that came the steward’s office, a small sitting room for female servants and the housekeeper’s room, leading to the still room and kitchen, with sleeping accommodation, possibly in dormitories, above. Beyond that were further household offices and the laundry with its own walled drying yard.95
For ease of access, the countess’s lady’s maid had sleeping quarters in the family wing – so she could be on call – while the nursery wing was always above the butler’s pantry. In one large bedroom in the tower, which is thought to have been used for visiting ladies’ maids because it gave easy access to the bedrooms just below it on the first floor, there is evidence that it was once separated into private areas by hanging curtains, as in a modern hospital.96
Even in country houses on a grander scale, it was common in the nineteenth century to add or remodel sizeable areas of service accommodation. When the 6th Duke of Devonshire (1790–1858), the only son of the famous Georgiana, inherited Chatsworth in 1811, he employed Sir Jeffry Wyatville to extend the house to the north with an extensive new wing, incorporating a grand dining room. At the same time Wyatville substantially remodelled the servants’ accommodation.
Unusually, the duke himself wrote what was effectively a guidebook, Handbook of Chatsworth and Hardwick, privately printed in 1845, telling the story of the house in his own words. Under ‘The Offices’, he remarked that the East Lobby ‘used to be the servants’ hall, and a very bad one: it is now used chiefly as a passage in which you must be skilful to avoid falling over all those trunks’.97
On the left hand were
the Housekeepers’ private apartments, consisting of three rooms that were the tea-room and the footmen’s rooms. The sitting-room is very good, though not quite so much so as a friend thought, when he said to me, ‘You know your mother had not such a room as this.’ It is, however, convenient and light, and overlooks all arr
ivals; . . . Next to these, towards the North, comes the servants’ hall, a beautiful example of Sir Jeffry’s stone-work, arched, as the Offices chiefly are, with great solidity and strength.’98
He was also clearly proud of the new kitchen although he had reservations about some of the other service areas:
The kitchen itself is handsome and spacious, and contains steam-cupboards, and a hot steam-table; and wood is the sole fuel employed in the high grate as well as coke for the steam contrivances, which, diminishing the quantity of blacks [smuts], must add greatly to the cleanliness of the place . . . The pastry [cook’s preparation room] convenient, the scullery awful, and the larder atrocious; for, although it may be airy, and highly convenient for salting, it looks into the abysses of a dusty coal-yard. . . . I spare you bakehouse, washhouse, and laundry: neither will we boast of the poultry-yard; but the dairy, of good architecture, is not bad. You pass under a building that contains the Clerk of works’ office and lodging-rooms, and by a gun-room [count] to the Porter’s lodge.99
Given the ever more complex arrangement of rooms, it is not surprising that the technology of bells continued to develop throughout the nineteenth century, during which period many late-eighteenth-century wire-systems were updated wires. Many early-nineteenth century systems are still visible, if now unused, in the staff corridors of country houses. But the constant ringing of bells could be the source of some contention with staff, some servants walking great distances to find out what was required, before covering the same distance twice to return with the required object. Such strains, indeed, lay at the core of one of the most famous murder trials, when in 1840, a Swiss valet, François Courvoisier, murdered Lord William Russell, uncle of the Duke of Bedford. He was said to have been discovered as a thief and murdered his elderly master, and hanged. But in his defence, he said his master was always finding fault with him.100 At midnight on the dreadful day, his master rang the bell for attention and Courvoisier went up holding a warming pan to be at the ready. Lord William was furious that his servant should had seen fit to prejudge his request and sent him down. He rang the bell a little later and when the valet arrived asked him to fetch a warming pan. Later he came down, found his valet in the dining room and sacked him; shortly after this, the valet claimed he snapped and killed his master in a fury.101
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