Up and Down Stairs (14 page)

If that sad end were not enough, the story darkened still further. ‘I received an account in October (six weeks after he was buried) from London, that it was creditably reported that I had caused him to be gelt [gelded?], and that it had occasioned his death. I laughed at it at first, knowing it to be false, as a ridiculous story, till I was further informed that this came from the Duke of Norfolk and his family, with whom . . . I had some suits and differences.’
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Reresby had a coroner and witnesses inspect the body: ‘some that laid him out, the rest that saw him naked, severall bycaus of his colour having the curiosity to see him after he was dead gave in their verdict that he dyed ex visitatione Dei (or by the hand of God)’. At least one more exhumation followed. There is no sadder example of the tragedy of these young black men, sold into slavery when often little more than children, and passed around as exotic objects at a distance of many thousands of miles from their own families or cultures.
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As we have seen, by the late seventeenth century women had begun to make up a more substantial proportion of the servant numbers. Clear evidence of this is provided by one of the books published under the name of Hannah Wolley,
The Gentlewomans Companion
(1675), and by
The Compleat Servant-Maid
(1685), which includes detailed information about the principal female roles in domestic service at the time.
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This list includes: waiting woman, housekeeper,
chambermaid, cook-maid, under-cook-maid, nurserymaid, dairymaid, laundrymaid, housemaid, and scullerymaid.
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Mrs Wolley, a remarkable former household servant, became a popular cookery author, and although this book may not in fact be entirely by her hand, nevertheless it built on her fame.

According to
The Gentlewomans Companion
, in the decades immediately after the Restoration it had become the norm for many roles in domestic service to be increasingly undertaken by women. Whether entirely the work of Mrs Wolley or not, this book has its own place in the history of servants and, indeed, in the history of women’s education, offering an insight into the opportunities afforded by domestic service and the perceived character of the whole class of female servants, who had seemed almost invisible in the previous century. As well as having enhanced ‘housewife skills’, the would-be housekeeper, for instance, must be able to manage servants: ‘And as I told you before you must Preserve well; so you must have a competent knowledge in Distilling, making Cates [Cakes], all manner of spoon-meats [liquid foods, especially for children], and the like. Be carefull in looking after the Servants, that every one perform their duty in their several places, that they keep good hours in up-rising, and lying down, and that no Goods be either spoil’d, or embezzl’d.’
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A housekeeper’s behaviour had to be ‘grave and solid’ to show that she was able ‘to govern a Family’, which meant to manage a household. The housekeeper was also by now responsible for the demeanour and behaviour of the lower women servants, and here the injunctions to senior servants echo those in John Russell’s
Book of Nurture
: ‘all Strangers [should] be nobly and civilly used in their Chambers; and that your Master or Lady be not dishonoured through neglect or miscarriage of Servants. To be first up, and last in bed, to prevent junketing.’
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Any chambermaid ‘to persons of Quality’, it is stressed, must be skilled at washing and mending clothes. ‘You must make your Ladies bed; . . . lay out her Night-clothes; see that her Chamber be kept clean, and nothing wanting which she desires or requires to be done. Be modest in your deportment, ready at her call, always diligent.’
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Some of these skills are associated with the later role of the lady’s maid, whilst the cleaning and fires would have fallen to the housemaid. The ‘Nursery-Maids in Noble Families’ are advised, with some good sense, ‘to be naturally inclined to love young children or else you will soon discover your unfitness to manage that charge’.
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The female cook of the day was generally known as the cook-maid; her prowess ‘will chiefly consist in dressing all sorts of Meat, both Fish, flesh and Fowl, all manner of Baked-meats, all kind of Sawces, and which are most proper for every sort of Dish, and be curious in garnishing your Dishes’. Economy and cleanliness were key: ‘Be as saving as you can, and cleanly about every thing; see also that your Kitchen be kept clean, and all thin gs [sic] scoured in due time; your Larders also and Cupboards, that there be no bits of meat or bread lye about them to spoil and stink.’
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The author advises against taking perquisites (meaning leftover food that could be sold for personal profit) but it must have been a common practice: ‘do not covet to have the Kitchin-stuff for your vails, but rather ask [for] the more wages, for that may make you an ill Huswife of your Masters goods, and of your Masters good, and teach you to be a thief.’
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For under-cook-maids: ‘it behoves you to be very diligent and willing to do what you are bid to do; and though your employment be greasie and smutty, yet if you please you may keep your self from being nasty.’ Under-cook-maids should observe what their superiors do, ‘treasure it up in your memory’ and then put it into practice; ‘this course will advance you from a drudge to be a Cook another day. . . . Everyone must have a beginning.’
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‘Dairy-Maids in great Houses’ were exhorted to scald their vessels well and milk ‘your Cattel in due times’. They must also see that ‘Hogs have the whey, and that it be not given away to idle or gossiping people, who live merely upon what they can get from Servants.’ If pigs or chicken are in their care, they must ‘look to them that it may be your credit and not your shame when they come to the Table’.
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Laundrymaids in great houses were advised that their duty ‘will be to take care of the Linnen in the house, except Points and Laces; whatever you wash, do it up quickly, that it may not stink
and grow yellow, and be forced to the washing again before it be used’.
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Housemaids were not left in ignorance of their duty either: ‘Your principal Office is to make clean the greatest part of the house; and so that you suffer no room to lie foul; that you look well to all the stuff, and see that they be often brushed, and all the Beds frequently turned.’ At this point the housemaid is expected to ‘be careful for, and diligent to all Strangers, and see that they lack nothing in their Chambers, which your Mistress or Lady will allow; and that your Close-stools and Chamber-pots be duly emptied and kept clean’. A housemaid might also be expected to assist in the laundry on a washing day and to help the housekeeper or waiting woman ‘in their Preserving and Distilling’.
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The lowest in the ranks of female servants was the scullery-maid, who had some of the hardest work of all: ‘There are several Rooms that you must keep sweet and clean, as the Kitchen, Pantry, Wash-house, &c. That you wash and scowre all the Plates and Dishes which are used in the Kitchen, also Kettles, Pots, Pans, Chamber-pots, with all other Iron, Brass, and Pewter materials that belong to the Chambers or Kitchen; and lastly you must wash your own linnen.’ This could still serve as the job description of a scullery-maid until the early twentieth century, when advances in technology could take over some of its most physically demanding aspects.
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In
The Gentlewomans Companion
(1675), the emphasis is also laid on good management of servants and the mistress of the house is urged to keep good hours for her repose, ‘that your servants may be the better disposed for the next day’s labour’. And later she is told: ‘rather be silent if you cannot speak good.’
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Also, mistresses are exhorted to give ‘kind acknowledgment’ of servants’ loyalty, and to ‘Be not too passionate with your servants.’ It was the mistress’s responsibility to oversee and set the standard for good time-keeping for her servants, and also to be generous with them, but not to a superfluity: ‘as that may entertain a sort [set?] of loose Gossips in corners, the very bane and spoil of servants.’
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Some men were suspicious of female power in the household, as can be seen from
Advice to His Son
, written by Henry Percy, 9th Earl
of Northumberland, and published in 1609: ‘Grip into your hands what power soever you will of government, yet will there be certain persons about your wife that you will never reduce – an usher, her tailor, and her women.’ According to the earl, they ‘will ever talk and ever be unreasonable; all which your [household] officers will rather endeavour to please then [i.e. than] your self . . . In a house thus governed, factions will be rife, as well amongst your own servants as amongst your friends and hers; for her friends will ever be the welcomest and best used, the train of women friends being ever the longest and most troublesome.’
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Some adults wanted to separate their children from the influence of servants of either sex. The Duchess of Newcastle (d. 1673) recorded how her parents tried to keep her away from the domestic staff, refusing to allow ‘any familiarity with the vulgar servants, or conversation: yet [they] caused us to demean ourselves with a humble civility towards them, as they with a dutiful respect to us.’

On the other hand, she recognised the dangers of children spending too much time in a great house without supervision lest they ran wild, getting ‘into every dirty office, where the young master must learn to drink and play at cards with the kitchen-boy, & learn to kiss his mother’s dirty maid for a mess of cream. The daughters are danced upon the knee of every clown and serving man, & hear them talk scurrilous to the maids.’
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Rather more poignantly, in
Brief Lives
John Aubrey related that Sir John Danvers once told him that the reason that the gentry liked their sons to take the Grand Tour was to ‘wean them from the acquaintance and familiarity with the Serving-men: for then parents were so austere and grave that the sonnes must not be company for their Father; and some company man must have.’
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This shows how long a tradition the distant parent, and the companionable servant, has been in the English aristocracy.

In the seventeenth century the management of a household began to devolve more from the mistress of the house, to whom it might prove onerous. In the 1670s, Mary Evelyn, the wife of the diarist, landowner and gardener John Evelyn, wrote a memorandum on household management for her husband’s young friend, Margaret,
then newly married to the politician and courtier Sidney Godolphin, which principally consists of long lists of necessary household items, from linen to pewter and glassware. John Evelyn said later that the young Mrs Godolphin ‘never was House-keeper before, had lost her Mother long since & being from a Child, bred in Courts, may be thought (with reproch) not much to have busied her head about Oeconomique matters’.
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This friendly letter touched in important ways on the management of servants’ food: ‘What is left at dinner & that may handsomely be spar’d from the Servants (whom I am sure you will not abridge, but this will be the discretion of your woman, who you say shall be your Housekeeper) may [be] reserv’d for their Supper; though in London they have in most places only Bread & Beer. But here in the Country where they work continually and are much abroad, they will require Supper of Flesh, of which something is kept for your Breakfast.’
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A key piece of advice was appointing a trusted female to run the household by proxy, as Mrs Godolphin had asked about how best to manage accounts and servants: ‘all I can say is, That if you have a faithful Woman or Housemaid, it will cost you little trouble. It were necessary that such a one were a good Market-woman, & whose Eyes must bee from the Garret to the Cellar; nor is it enough they see all things made cleane in the House, but set in ord[e]r also.’
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A minor aside suggests that a large residential domestic staff at that time could be controlled by mistress and housekeeper in a way that non-resident domestics could not: ‘Use as seldom Charewomen and Out-helpers as you can [because] they but make Gossips.’
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To sum up, the faithful housekeeper ‘should bee the first of Servants stirring and last in bed, & have some authority over the rest, & you must hear her & give her credit, yet not without your owne Examination & inspection . . . It is necessary alsoe she should know how to write and cast up small sums & bring you her Book every Saturday-night, which you may cause to be enter’d into another for your selfe . . . such a servant (I tell you) is a jewel not easily to be found.’
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This advice clearly bore fruit. When Mrs Godolphin died in 1678, in his biography of her Evelyn mentions her concern, ‘care
and esteem of those she left behind, even to her domestic servants to the meanest of which she left considerable legacies, as to the poor’.
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In 1685, the Evelyns sent a version of this document to Samuel Pepys, who filed it with a similar specification from Lady Rolles for what was needed in a household. This version ends with a list of the qualities required in a housekeeper, including cooking skills, management of female servants, ‘to keepe the Storehouse & all the Houshold-Linnen & mend & make it, & help to fold it when she is at leisure, that she may see it well done’. Lady Rolles’ list stressed one point in particular: ‘But the chief thing I desire [is that she] be an excellent Cooke, a good Housewife & a willing Servant to doe what I thinke belongs to her place.’
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