The English: A Social History, 1066–1945 (Text Only)

by Christopher Hibbert

  Most clerks, in fact, earned little more than skilled artisans. In the professions, however, rewards could be much higher. This was admittedly not true of the army; but then there were few officers who had no more than their pay to live on, and none at all in the smartest and most expensive regiments in which commissions changed hands for large sums. The Army List published an official list of ‘Prices of Commissions’. That for July 1854 gives the following figures for the various ranks from cornet and ensign to lieutenant-colonel:

  Foot Guards

  Lieutenant-colonel £9000

  Major £8300

  Captain £4800

  Lieutenant £2050

  Ensign £1200

  Life Guards

  Lieutenant-colonel £7250

  Major £5350

  Captain £3500

  Lieutenant £1785

  Cornet £1260

  Dragoons

  Lieutenant-colonel £6175

  Major £4575

  Captain £3225

  Lieutenant £1190

  Cornet £840

  Regiments of the Line

  Lieutenant-colonel £4500

  Major £3200

  Captain £1800

  Lieutenant £700

  Ensign £450

  These sums, large as they were, were frequently exceeded. The Earl of Lucan, for example, paid £25,000 for the command of the 17th Lancers. And it was not uncommon for poorer officers, talented though they might be, to remain throughout their careers blocked on the path to promotion by lack of money. It was not until the country had been shocked by the course of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 that the Secretary of State for War, Edward Cardwell, was able, among other reforms, to abolish the purchase of commissions.

  In professions other than the army rewards could be high. The headmaster of a good public school could command a salary of at least £1000; so could, it was estimated in 1851, ‘a physician who is becoming popular’ and, according to a writer in the Contemporary Review, ‘a young married lawyer’. A promising barrister could earn £5000 a year; while celebrated lawyers in the 1880S were receiving over £15,000 a year, and doctors of the standing of Sir William Jenner earned almost as much. Jenner himself left £375,000.

  In the earlier years of the century, so A New System of Practical Domestic Economy advised, a man with £5000 a year could not only maintain an establishment of thirteen male and nine female servants, but also ten horses, a coach, a curricle, a tilbury and a gig. And, so the same authority maintained, a man with £1000 a year could afford, in addition to his footman and three female servants, a coachman, two horses and a four-wheeled carriage.15

  The carriage was all important. It should preferably be a four-wheeled carriage such as a barouche, but the possession of a light two-wheeled, one-horse carriage, a gig or a curricle, might entitle a family to be known as ‘carriage people’ and to be respected by shopkeepers as representing part of that valued custom known as ‘the carriage trade’. An income of at least £600 a year was required to maintain an equipage of the most modest kind; a four-wheeled carriage complete with two horses, coachman, stabling and coach-house indicated an income considerably larger than that. In all there were, in 1856, slightly more than 200,000 people with their own private carriages.16 One of them was Charles Dickens who could not disguise his pride when his success enabled him first to acquire a ‘small chaise with a smaller pair of ponies’ and then a ‘more suitable equipage’ cared for by a groom.

  As he prospered, Dickens not only bought more expensive carriages, he also bought larger and more imposing houses, moving from Doughty Street to Devonshire Terrace, Regent’s Park, a large house of ‘“undeniable” situation and excessive splendour’, which he took for £160 a year, paying £800 for the remaining twelve years of the lease; then moving to an even larger and grander house in Tavistock Square, for which he paid £1450 for a forty-five year lease; and, in 1856, buying a country house, Gad’s Hill Place in Kent, for £1700.17

  For ‘carriage people’ a commodious house was, of course, as necessary as the equipage itself. In the country house of, say, a moderately prosperous solicitor in the middle of the century, as well as bedrooms and dressing-rooms for the family and guests, there would be servants’ rooms and nurseries approached by a back staircase. The domestic offices would be separated from the reception rooms by a swing door covered in red or green baize. As in the larger houses of the conservative upper classes, bathrooms were still rare; so were pipes for gas and hot water. ‘There was no bathroom at Down,’ wrote Charles Darwin’s granddaughter of his house in Kent, ‘nor any hot water except in the kitchen, but there were plenty of housemaids to run about with big brown-painted bath-cans.’18 When Dr Proudie becomes Bishop of Barchester his wife finds that the house in the close to which she is to move has ‘no gas; none whatever, but in the kitchen and passages [and] there is no hot water laid on anywhere above the ground floor. Surely there should be means of getting hot water in the bedrooms without having it brought in jugs from the kitchen.’ She soon has gas installed; but many middle-class houses remained without it for many years yet.

  Oil lamps and candles were used for lighting [recalled a vicar’s daughter of her life in Hertfordshire in the 1850s and early 1860s]. There were no bathrooms then, and all hot water and cold water had to be carried from the kitchen and scullery. But we all had baths each day in spite of that … Our drawing-room was papered with a buff and gilt Fleur-de-Lys patterned paper. There were bookshelves and pier glasses and woolwork ottomans and an upright grand piano with faded red silk fluted across the front and a very fine harp … The carpet was red with a buff pattern and my mother had a davenport [a small writing-table] sacred to her own use. In the best bedrooms there were four-post beds with damask curtains, though brass beds were by then becoming fashionable … After the nurse left, our household consisted of a cook, house-parlour-maid and a girl. The wages were £18, £16 and £6. A widow who lived in a cottage nearby came in to bake and to help when required. She always wore her bonnet and clattered about the kitchen and scullery in pattens. The family then were my father and mother and myself and two brothers who came on visits, as did, later, grandchildren. Our income then I think, was about £800 a year. We kept an open carriage called a Stanhope … a groom, one horse and a groom-gardener who also pumped and looked after the fowls and pigs … There was a park-like field, a small flower garden and excellent kitchen garden and stables.19

  In towns the well-to-do middle class generally lived in detached villas well away from the commercial centre. The larger villas had extensive gardens surrounded by walls and, often, a lodge with a gatekeeper to keep unwanted callers, beggars and pedlars at bay. In London, and in such towns as Cheltenham, Bath, Brighton, Leamington, and Bristol, terrace houses were still considered fashionable; but, except in Scotland, flats Were not so. It was not until later in the century that mansion flats became acceptable to the prosperous middle class. The blocks around Ashley Place, Westminster, were built in the 1850s but it was not before the 1870s and 1880s that a growing demand for large flats led to such developments as Norman Shaw’s Albert Hall Mansions of 1879.20

  As more and more prosperous middle-class people moved into flats, so, too, did the rather less well-to-do move into semi-detached houses, the first of which had been built at St John’s Wood where, as early as 1796, a firm of auctioneers had recommended the laying-out of a grand circus ringed with pairs of semi-detached houses. The circus did not materialize but the pairs of houses did, spreading along the banks of the canal, up Wellington Road towards Hampstead and Finchley, and inaugurating a form of domestic architecture which was soon afterwards to be seen in every town in England.21 At the same time row upon row of small terrace houses, many with bow windows in the front rooms, stained glass over the front doors and small brick-walled gardens at the front and back, were being built for the respectable lower middle classes who lived behind their heavy curtains in domestic seclusion if not always in that domestic harmon
y of Charles Kingsley’s ideal.

  Charles Pooter, a clerk in a mercantile office in the City, lives in a house much like this, No. 12 Brickfield Terrace, Holloway, known as ‘The Laurels’. This has a porticoed front door, a stuccoed balustrade protecting the house from the street, heavy facings surrounding the windows, and an out-of-scale parapet projecting several feet above the level of the flat roof, which gives the front façade a false impression of height. Lace curtains, and a half-closed blind in the sitting-room, conceal the occupants from view; the back of Mrs Pooter’s dressing-table looking-glass is all that can be seen in her bedroom window. In addition to the basement there are six rooms in the house in one of which sleeps a maid. As in most other lower-middle-class houses of this time – the late 1880s and early 1890s – the lighting is by gas and a geyser noisily supplies hot water in a small bathroom.

  On his return from the City by omnibus, Mr Pooter enjoys a meat-tea, reads the newspaper or Exchange and Mart, listens to his wife playing the cottage piano (bought on the three years’ system), or does a few odd jobs about the house. ‘There is always something to be done: a tin-tack here, a Venetian blind to put straight, a fan to nail up or part of a carpet to nail down’, all of which he can do, he assures us, with his pipe in his mouth. Occasionally his friend Cummings (a keen tricyclist and regular reader of Bicycle News), comes in for a game of dominoes or bezique, a glass or two of whiskey (price 36s for a dozen bottles) or a smoke in the breakfast parlour. Sometimes Mrs Cummings and other friends call and then Mrs Cummings sings a song or two, or they play consequences or more noisy games like ‘Monkeys and Cutlets’ or listen to Mr Fosselton of the local amateur dramatic society, the Holloway Comedians, doing his priceless imitation of Henry Irving. On Sundays Mr and Mrs Pooter always go to church, often twice; and Mr Pooter takes it as ‘a great compliment’ when the curate asks him to take round the plate. He also thinks it a great impertinence when the grocer’s boy has the cheek to bring his basket to the front door.22

  Both Mr Pooter and his wife are sticklers for propriety as were nearly all members of their class for whom books of etiquette and guides to deportment – together with manuals of domestic economy and publications such as Party Giving on Every Scale and Dont: Mistakes and Improprieties more or less prevalent in Conduct and Speech – were published in ever-growing numbers and were so widely read that many of them became best-sellers in numerous editions.

  One of these manuals advised its female readers that

  Soup should be eaten with a table spoon, and not with a dessert. Fish should be eaten with a silver fish-knife and fork. All made dishes, such as rissoles, patties, etc., should be eaten with a fork only. In eating asparagus a knife and fork should be used. Salad should be eaten with a knife and fork. Jellies, blancmanges, iced puddings, etc., should be eaten with a fork … When eating cheese, small morsels of cheese should be placed with a knife on small morsels of bread, and the two conveyed to the mouth with the thumb and finger, the piece of bread being the morsel to hold as the cheese should not be taken up in the fingers, and should not be eaten off the point of the knife. As a matter of course, young ladies do not eat cheese at dinner parties.23

  Every activity of a lady’s day was covered by these manuals. She was instructed how to behave in any circumstance in which she might find herself, and told what clothes to wear and how to wear them. Virtuous women had a ‘repugnance to excessive luxury’ in underclothing; they never wore ‘too much lace embroidery or ribbons and bows’; to wear a garter below the knee was ‘against all rules of taste’; night chemises must have long sleeves and reach down to the feet. If face powder were worn it must be applied so modestly that its effects could be mistaken for those of a slight natural bloom. When asked to dance, according to Society Small Talk (1879), a lady did not reply, ‘I shall be happy’, a phrase that had quite ‘disappeared in Company’. Less eager responses, after a glance at the dance card, were more lady-like. Recommended replies were, ‘I will give you a dance if you will come for it a little later. I am engaged for the next three’, or ‘I am afraid I have not one to spare except number fourteen, a quadrille.’

  Control over the countenance was an essential part of good manners, readers of The Habits of Good Society were informed. On gracefully entering a drawing-room – not rushing in ‘head-foremost’ – a lady should look for her hostess, a smile upon her face, granting ‘an elegant bend to common acquaintance’, then accepting the hand extended to her with ‘cordial pressure’ rather than shaking it. ‘Let her sink gently into a chair … Her feet should scarcely be shown and not crossed.’

  It was also essential to master the rules governing the presentation of visiting cards:

  A lady’s card is larger than a gentleman’s. The former may be glazed, the latter not … A young lady does not require a separate card so long as she is living with her mother … Cards should be delivered in person, and not sent by post. A lady should desire her manservant to inquire if the mistress of the house at which she is calling is ‘at home.’ If ‘not at home,’ she should hand him three cards: one of her own and two of her husband’s … If the answer is in the affirmative, she should, after making the call, leave two of her husband’s cards on the hall-table, and neither put them in the card-basket nor offer them to her hostess, all of which would be very incorrect. When the mistress of the house has a grown-up daughter or daughters, the lady leaving cards should turn down one corner of her visiting card – the right-hand corner generally – to include the daughter … in the call.24

  Books of etiquette were addressed to men as well as to women:

  Don’t tuck your napkin under your chin or spread it upon your breast [one of these authorities advised]. Don’t eat from the end of your spoon, but from the side. Don’t gurgle, or draw in your breath, or make other noises when eating soup … Don’t bite your bread. Break it off [but not] into your soup … Don’t expectorate on the sidewalk … Don’t use slang. There is some slang that, according to Thackeray is gentlemanly slang, and other slang that is vulgar. If one does not know the difference, let them avoid slang altogether … Don’t use profane language … Don’t use meaningless exclamations … Don’t call your servants girls … Don’t conduct correspondence on postal-cards … Don’t sit cross-legged. Pretty nearly everybody of the male sex does – but nevertheless, don’t … Don’t, however brief your call, wear overcoat or overshoes into the drawing-room. If you are making a short call, carry your hat and cane in your hand, but never an umbrella … Don’t attempt to shake hands with everybody present. If host or hostess offers a hand, take it; a bow is sufficient for the rest. Don’t in any case, offer to shake hands with a lady. The initiative must always come from her. By the same principle don’t offer your hand to a person older than yourself, or to any one whose rank may be supposed to be higher than your own, until he has extended his.

  When meeting a female acquaintance in the street a man must wait until he received a bow. ‘You then lift your hat quite off your head [though] you have no need, as they do in France, to show the world the inside thereof, so you immediately replace it. In making this salute you bend the body slightly. If, as should rarely occur, you happen to be smoking, you take your cigar from your mouth with the other hand.’

  In addition to these books on etiquette there were also numerous works on domestic economy. Kitchiner’s Cook’s Oracle and Housekeeper’s Oracle, published in the 1820s were still referred to, as were Hayward’s Art of Dining, Carême’s Maître d Hotel Français, Soyer’s The Modern Housewife and the works of Louis Eustache Ude. Margaret Dodd’s Cookery Book of 1830 was followed by Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery in All its Branches; Mrs Rundell’s New System of Domestic Cookery, Formed upon Principles of Economy and Adapted to the Use of Private Families; Domestic Duties, or Instructions to Young Married Ladies on the Management of Their Households; and, in 1861, the first one-volume edition of the celebrated Household Management by Mrs Beeton, a publisher’s wife who died before she was thirty, having given
birth to her fourth son.

  Mrs Beeton and Alexis Soyer both offered suggestions for quite simple meals as well as for dinner parties. Here, for example, are Mrs Beeton’s recommendations for a week’s ‘plain family dinners’ for a comfortably off middle-class household:

  SUNDAY

  Clear Gravy Soup. Roast Haunch of Mutton. Sea Kale. Potatoes. Rhubarb Tart. Custard in Glasses.

  MONDAY

  Crimped Skate and Caper Sauce. Boiled Knuckle of Veal and Rice. Cold Mutton. Stewed Rhubarb and Baked Custard Pudding.

  TUESDAY

  Vegetable Soup. Toad in the Hole, made from the remains of cold mutton. Stewed Rhubarb and Baked Plum Pudding.

  WEDNESDAY

  Fried Soles. Dutch Sauce. Boiled Beef, carrots, suet dumplings. Lemon Pudding.

  THURSDAY

  Pea Soup made from liquor that beef was boiled in. Cold Beef. Mashed Potatoes. Mutton Cutlets and Tomato Sauce. Macaroni.

  FRIDAY

  Bubble and Squeak, made with remains of cold beef. Roast Shoulder of Veal, stuffed, and spinach and potatoes. Boiled Batter Pudding and Sweet Sauce.

  SATURDAY

  Stewed Veal and Vegetables, made from remains of the shoulder. Broiled rumpsteaks and oyster sauce. Yeast Dumplings.

  When guests were to be entertained and impressed, less simple fare was naturally recommended, although Mrs Beeton did not favour the extravagance of eighteenth-century menus. One of her recommendations for a dinner party for twelve people begins with soup à la Reine and Julienne soup, followed by turbot with lobster sauce and slices of salmon à la Genevese. As entrées she suggests croquettes of leveret, fricandeau of veal, and vol au vent with stewed mushrooms. Then come guinea fowls and forequarter of lamb; and – after charlotte à la Parisienne, orange jelly, meringues, ratafia ice pudding and lobster salad with sea kale – dessert and ices.