Up and Down Stairs (15 page)

The reduction in the numbers of gentlemen-status attendants was reflected in architectural terms. This is the century of the ‘back stairs’, with the provision of a separate servants’ hall at a distance from the ‘polite’ quarters of the house. This is vividly illustrated by one late-seventeenth-century treatise on architecture, ‘On planning a country house’, written by Sir Roger North, in which he observes that ‘it is an inviolable rule to have the entrata in the midle. But this must not be the common passage for all things, in regard [to] your freinds [sic] and persons of esteem should pass without being annoyed by the sight of foul persons [that is, the servants], and things must and will be moving in some part of a large and well inhabited dwelling.’ He argued: ‘Therefore, for such occasions there must be a back entrata. . . . The like is to be sayd of stayres. For the chief must not be annoyed with disagreeable objects, but be releived [sic] of them by a back-inferior stairecase.’
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As for servants’ sleeping accommodation, there was a continuation of the pattern created in the late medieval and Tudor period, in that lower servants’ bedrooms were usually in garrets, sometimes in the small rooms behind the upper part of a gable or above stables. In the late 1680s, on a visit to the architecturally advanced Coleshill House in Leicestershire, built in the 1650s, Celia Fiennes noted in her diary ‘several garret rooms for servants furnished very neat and genteel’.
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The evidence of wills and inventories does not suggest that many
such rooms, except those of the most senior household officers, were particularly well furnished and they were often shared.
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Dining in the early part of the seventeenth century still largely took place in the hall but by the end of the century servants and tenants no longer dined alongside the immediate family in the public sphere of the house. The earliest reference to a servants’ hall seems to be in 1654, when the inventory was taken at Aston Hall in Warwickshire, which was built in the 1630s; in the later seventeenth century, such halls are also recorded at Charborough in Dorset, at The Vyne and at Belton House, both in Hampshire.
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In an inventory of 1664, the servants’ hall at Aldermaston House in Berkshire is said to contain a large table, a side cupboard, two old Turkey chairs (meaning that they are decorated with knotted embroidery), an elbow chair, two Turkey-work stools and a candlestick.
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In his diary for September 1677, John Evelyn expressed his admiration for the newly built Euston Hall in Norfolk, noting the quality (and the separateness) of the servants’ accommodation, with ‘appartments for my Lord, Lady, and Dutchesse, with kitchins & other offices below, in a lesser volume with lodgings for servants, all distinct . . . The out-offices make two large quadrangles, so as never servants liv’d with more ease & convenience, never Master more Civil.’ Later he adds: ‘He has built a Lodge in the Park for the Keeper which is neate & sweete dwelling and might become any gentleman of quality.’
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However, when gentleman and amateur architect Roger Pratt wrote down his principles for designing a country house in 1660, he was concerned that bedchambers for family and guests be served by a nearby servants’ lodging that had access to the back stairs. Each of the chambers, he declared, should ‘have a closet, and a servant’s lodging with chimney, both of which will easily be made by dividing the breadth of one end of the room into two such parts as shall be convenient’. Nevertheless, he did not recommend servants’ garrets above bedchambers that would be used by guests, as the latter would thereby be disturbed. He recommended a basement kitchen. But above all, the house should be ‘so contrived . . . that the ordinary servants may never publicly appear in passing to and fro [on] their occasions’.
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On the other hand, his contemporary Sir Roger North thought that the back entrance should be used by the master of the house so that he could superintend his servants at work and talk to them privately, out of earshot of any honoured guests:
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‘It is no unseemly object to an English gentleman to se[e] his servants and business passing at ordinary times.’
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Pratt recommended a separate servants’ hall in 1660, and North did the same. North argued for a separate servants’ hall which was not too close to the parlour, because of possible noise, but not too distant: ‘that the servants may be in awe’. The upper servants he thought should have a part screened off, ‘for quality (forsooth) must be distinguisht.’
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We have reached an age when the well-dressed and well-mannered attendant–companion has been passed over in favour of the dedicated domestic servant, and when the privacy of the aristocratic family has taken on a new importance. But we should not forget that many landed families maintained their ancient traditions with some pride, responding to these new attitudes with only modest alterations. One such was Tichborne House in Hampshire, whose whole household is recorded in the 1671 painting by Gillis van Tilborch of the annual dole ceremony there, presided over by Sir Henry Tichborne, 3rd Baronet, lieutenant of the New Forest and the Royal Ordnance.
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This ritual distribution of bread to the poor continues today.

In an unusual but moving display, which has its origins in the medieval household, the immediate blood family and all the domestic servants are depicted, with many older and trusted figures shown close to the head of the household. Behind Sir Henry stands the family nurse, Constantia Atkins, while behind Lady Tichborne stands Mrs Chitty, her maid, Mrs Robinson, the housekeeper, and his Roman Catholic house chaplain, Father Robert Hill.

The local people and those about to receive the dole are to the right while the full household is shown on the left of the painting, with the lowly women servants, presumably the laundresses and kitchenmaids, back from the main group near the house. Footmen in typically distinctive, seventeenth-century livery carry the baskets of loaves to be given to the poor on Lady Day or 25 March. The men-servants here, whose more public role is clearly evident, still
outnumber the women servants but the women are better represented than they would have been in the previous century.

The painting is a truly remarkable image of a country house and all who lived and worked in it, as if it was a whole community on parade. It is also an important record of the dress of the seventeenth-century servant, demonstrating the social hierarchies of a wealthy gentry household.

In contrast, the simple human experience of service, and the desire for human companionship in the workplace, are expressed in a rare letter dated 1664 in which a servant, Jane Greethurst, laments the departure of the friend and fellow servant with whom she used to share her bed: ‘I have been soe much alone since I lost your good company which have troubled me very much; I have never laught when I was in Bed since you went away ffor I have noe body to spake to, nor was I warme in my Bed till I put on my Stockings.’
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H
OW GRAND TO
be so grand. When we visit an eighteenth-century country house today, such as Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire, or Holkham Hall in Norfolk, despite their daunting scale and obvious grandeur we cannot help feeling that such places are the product of a more rational age. This is often reflected not only in the grandest elements of design but also in the careful arrangement of the kitchen wings and related offices – the usual term given to the domestic-service rooms and outbuildings.
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These areas contribute to the whole, for, after all, what is a palace without its dependencies, and even if the relationships differ from those of earlier centuries, what is a lord without his attendants? In this period, the kitchen offices are divided ever more precisely into numerous separate and supporting spaces for the preparation of food, for cleaning, for the doing of laundry and for providing well-organised stables and coach houses, a process that continues to be refined throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The country house is now, more than ever, a machine for living.

The overall sense of order and stateliness expressed in the architecture of these country houses was, of course, entirely self-conscious. Their scale, detail and symmetry were inspired by the buildings of ancient Rome, and were intended to project an image of status and permanence, but it was always as much a projection of an ideal as it was of a convincing reality. Many older country houses were simply adapted modestly to modern needs (often with the addition of new servants’ wings and stables). The fortunes of many landed families waxed and waned with the times, some bankrupting themselves on ambitious building projects.

The commercial interests of England were spreading over the globe. Agricultural improvements, and the beginnings of the industrial revolution (accompanied by an unparalleled political security compared to that of the seventeenth century), meant that for a lucky few there was money as never before, allowing large landowners to sustain surprisingly large numbers of servants.

The great wealth of these men prompted a visiting Frenchman, François, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, to observe in 1784:

In general, the English have many more servants than we have, but more than half of them are never seen – kitchen-maids, stable-men, maidservants in large numbers – all of them being required in view of the high standard of cleanliness. Every Saturday, for instance, it is customary to wash the whole house from attic to basement, outside and in. The servants constitute the main part of the employers’ expenses: they are boarded according to general custom and the food required is immense – they never leave the table and there is a supply of cold meat, tea and punch from morning till night.
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As in earlier centuries, the biggest country houses of this period required a huge body of skilled servants for their running and maintenance, as well as to provide the regular demonstrations of display and deference that an aristocrat expected and required to underline his own prestige. Numerous sets of households rules and regulations were produced in this period, partly in an attempt to control these multitudes, but also resulting from the problems to be expected in managing a large body of staff.

As de la Rochefoucauld suggests, some servants in great houses seem to have lived astonishingly comfortable lives. The wealth and conspicuous consumption of the Georgian country house is captured in a probably apocryphal and certainly preposterous anecdote, related by Horace Walpole, of staying with the Duke of Bedford at Woburn. When a fellow guest dropped a silver coin on the floor, he remarked, ‘Oh, never mind, let the Groom of the Chambers have it,’ to which the duchess replied, ‘Let the carpet-sweeper have it: the Groom of the Chambers never takes anything but gold.’
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Also, with the increase in opportunity for travel came a parallel increase in the availability of new jobs, leading to a greater turnover
of staff and a migration of trained personnel, often towards the capital. The chance that life as a servant in a country house offered – for learning new skills, for getting an education and for acquiring some sort of betterment and security, as well as adventure – is exemplified in a very rare document of its kind, written by John Macdonald (1741–96), footman, valet, and sometime butler and steward.
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His vivid memoirs, first printed in 1790, are among the first published accounts of the life of a domestic servant, of which there have never been many – until the twentieth century. Originally entitled
Travels in Various Parts
to reflect the exoticism of his experiences abroad, Macdonald’s reminiscences were published in modern times as
Memoirs of an Eighteenth Century Footman
and they have all the ups and downs of a novel by Fielding or Smollett.

These memoirs remind us that however serene and luxurious life in a great household of the period might seem at this distance in time, it was subject to all the tensions, anxieties and turmoils that are the lot of human beings at any point in history. What is most surprising is the number and variety of Macdonald’s jobs, and the extent of his travels, during which he passed with ease between aristocratic, mercantile and military employers. He worked for more than twenty-five masters, for varying intervals, relishing his independence and the mobility of his profession – although his initial training was in a country house in the early part of the century.
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This is a flesh and blood tale, in which Macdonald displays his vanity, admits his own faults and forgives those of others with admirable equanimity. Servants were not just items in the account books, any more than the aristocracy and gentry that they worked for were as one-dimensional as their posed portraits might suggest, or as vacuous, haughty and thoughtless as characterisations in period drama would have us believe.

Mr Macdonald’s memoir begins with a childhood pitched into destitution that segues into a long and relatively rewarding career in domestic service. From the lowly position of postilion and footman, he rose to become valet and manservant to numerous gentlemen, particularly when on their travels. He was clearly talented as a barber and a cook, judging by his ability to secure a place when he needed
one. In early adulthood he opted for service in households kept by unmarried gentlemen. Because, he said, of his good looks he was considered too much of a risk around young wives or daughters, or in a household with a large number of women servants.
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