Up and Down Stairs (9 page)

I.M. bewailed the ‘decay of Hospitality and Good House-keeping’ that had brought about the decline of the traditional corporate flavour of the aristocratic household in which hospitality was paramount. He outlined the household as it had once been, the better calibre of men formerly called upon to serve: ‘First, they were chosen men of witte, discretion, government, and good bringing up’ which qualified them for being involved in the serious business, political affairs, and worldly wealth of their lords and masters.
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They would also be men of ‘valoure and courage, not fearing to
fight in the maintenance of their Maister’s credite in his just quarell’, of ‘strength and activitie’, to be excellent in the shooting, running, leaping and dancing like those henchmen in the opening scene of
Romeo and Juliet
. Finally, they were ‘men of qualitie’ to be seen in haulking [hawking], hunting, fyshing and fowling with all such like Gentlemanly pastimes.’
¹¹⁶
These ‘were known from the rest by the names of Serving men’ and were drawn from a gentlemanly background, as distinct from those in more servile roles.

Although it has to be admitted that the author was probably chiefly concerned with his own loss of status, and evidently thought little of the ordinary working men who came under his command, for him the joy of the service hierarchy was that it inextricably linked all the layers of society:

Even the Dukes sonne [was] preferred Page to the Prince, the Earles seconde son attendant upon the Duke, the Knight’s seconde sonne the Earles servant, the Esquires son to weare the Knyghtes lyverie, and the Gentleman’s sonnes the Esquire’s [sic] Serving Man. Yea, I know at this day, gentlemen[‘s] younger brothers that weares their elder brothers Blew coate and Badge, attending him with as revered regard and duetifull obedience, as if he were their Prince or Soveraigne.
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Nor did they think this hierarchy ‘servile’, whilst ‘their fare was always of the best, their apparel, fine, neate, handsome and comely’.
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It seemed to the author that things had altered beyond redemption: ‘The First is, the compounding of this pure and refined mettall (whereof Servingmen were first framed) with untryed dregges and drosse of less esteeme. The seconde is the death and decay of Liberalitie.’
¹¹⁹
Also, younger generations were no longer willing to lay out huge sums on the maintenance of large, unwieldy households, preferring instead to spend extravagantly on luxuries that their parents disdained.

In ‘I.M.’s view the upstart new gentry, who were descended from tradesmen, with their preparedness to take on the children of yeomen in place of the better-bred serving men of former times, spelt the beginning of the end:
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‘The Golden world is past and gone.’
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It is a pity we do not have any records of the views of the hard-working
yeoman’s sons, who no doubt considered themselves to be operating much more efficiently and practically than their over-bred predecessors. Whether I.M.’s perception of events was true or not, the nature of the great household was certainly changing. It would rely less and less on large numbers of well-connected attendants, whilst still requiring a degree of comfort, magnificence and hospitality that depended on the skills, labour, and loyalty of others.

I
N THE SEVENTEENTH
century, the households of landowners continued to be complex and hierarchical, but there was a shift from an emphasis on precedence and outward display to one of a more personal, moral and civilised way of life. This was the era of the cultivation of the Renaissance ideal of the gentleman. This adjustment affected the nature of relationships within noble households, which were very different from those of the early and mid-sixteenth century.
¹

The process of change was probably given additional impetus by the economic and social disruptions of the civil war and the Commonwealth in the middle of the century, not least because aristocrats formerly in exile brought home new ideas and patterns of behaviour. The most famous example was the arrival of dining
à la française
, with all the dishes laid out on the table at once, which remained the main form of service until the nineteenth century.
²

From matters of display, particularly grand dining, to the most minor aspect of country-house life, from estate and household accounting to the removal of slops, households continued to be served by a skilled body of servants whose whole lives might be spent in the service of one family. Somewhat smaller than the medieval community, the seventeenth-century household was still treated in a very hierarchical manner, but as the century progresses there is less emphasis on public service from a gentle-born attendant, and more on developing the specialised roles of the professional domestic servant.

Fynes Moryson, writing in 1617, recorded a proverb that England was the hell of horses, the purgatory of servants and the paradise of women, ‘because they ride Horses without measure, and use their
Servants imperiously, and their Women obsequiously’ [i.e. with excessive courtesy]. He also noted that households were generally smaller than those of the previous century.
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By the end of the seventeenth century, the barrier between employer and servant is drawn more vividly, not least in architectural terms, as from the middle of the century separate ‘servants’ halls’ begin appearing, showing that it was becoming the norm for the servants to dine separately – and out of sight. This custom increased throughout the seventeenth century. More private family dining arrangements are found, and the provision in attics for servants’ sleeping garrets is more common, as the aristocratic family wanted less immediate contact with the more menial servants. By this time, we really have moved into the world of upstairs and downstairs.

As historian Mark Girouard described it so memorably in
Life in the English Country House
: ‘The gentry walking up the stairs no longer met their last night’s faeces coming down them.’
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However, on a normal day the timing and management of menial servants would probably have been carefully calibrated in the grander houses to avoid such unpleasant encounters.

Aristocratic households continue to be somewhat peripatetic, moving between rural estates or between their country seats and London houses. In the early seventeenth century Sir John Hobart of Blickling Hall in Norfolk used to reduce his staff from twenty-seven to seven when he left his primary seat for a period in London.
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There might be as many as 120 staff, as in the Earl of Dorset’s household at Knole. Sir Thomas Wentworth of Wentworth Woodhouse (later Earl of Strafford) maintained a staff of sixty-four, including forty-four male servants, six female servants and a chaplain. The household of Sir Edward Carr of Aswarby in Lincolnshire (who in his will made bequests to forty-five servants, thirty-seven of whom were male) incorporated two tutors and a chaplain. A more typical household size for the landed gentry would have been that of Sir John Brownlow of Belton, who at the time of his death in 1679 employed thirty-one servants, twenty-one of them male.
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The drive for privacy in the early years of the century was related to emerging ideals of order and economy, as well as to a new sense of
cultivation and decorum (even ‘taste’) that reduced the expectation of the open-house largesse of the late medieval era. One Sir Hugh Cholmley recorded in his memoirs: ‘In spring, 1636, I removed from the Gate-house into my house at Whitby, being now finished and fit to receive me; and my dear wife (who was excellent at dressing and making all handsome within doors) had put it into a fine posture, and furnished with many good things, so that I believe, there were few gentlemen in the country, of my rank, exceeded it.’ He wrote with pride about his well-ordered life: ‘having mastered my debts, I did not only appear at all public meetings in a very gentlemanly equipage, but lived in as handsome and plentiful fashion at home as any gentleman in all the country, of my rank.’

He was pleased too with the number of his staff and their household management:

I had between thirty and forty in my ordinary family, a chaplain who said prayers every morning at six, and again before dinner and supper, a porter who merely attended the gates, which were ever shut up before dinner, when the bell rang to prayers, and not opened till one o’clock, except for some strangers who came to dinner, which was ever three or four besides my family; without any trouble; and whatever their fare was, they were sure to have a hearty welcome. Twice a week, a certain number of old people, widows and indigent persons, were served at my gates with bread and good pottage of beef.

Sir Hugh compared his own well-ordered housekeeping with that of his grandfather, who always had a crowd of riotous retainers.
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The gentleman attendant was still a feature of the early part of the century, but it was rare to find one at its end, except in the role of the steward, who might still be a minor landowner serving a greater lord in his district. Chaplains and secretaries might be well connected and would certainly be well educated. It was common to find a gentlewoman attendant to the lady of a household but this would be increasingly in the role of companion rather than social equal. The governess (also a feature in the sixteenth century) now becomes a familiar component of country-house life, and, as in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, she was expected to come from a superior background.
⁸

The seventeenth century seems to be a critical period in which women assume more and more of the servant roles in a country house, partly because they were cheaper but also because they were able to take on more senior housekeeping duties. Indeed, one could argue, this is the century that established as key characters both housekeeper and governess.

One speaker for the emerging figure of the senior female servant, just as John Russell wrote of the duties of the senior male servants a century and half earlier, is Hannah Wolley. As she was born around 1622 and died in the 1670s, her life spanned the middle years of the century, seeing her through the civil war, the Commonwealth and the Restoration.
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Mrs Wolley is a rather modern character, for although she had spent some years in domestic service, she was notably entrepreneurial, using her experience to become an admired – and imitated – author. From the age of seventeen she was in service to a noblewoman, almost certainly Anne, Lady Maynard, who died in 1647. Mrs Wolley continues to have something of a reputation as a writer of recipes today; indeed, she is thought to have been one of the first female British authors to make a reasonable living from her writing, but her reputation rested on her career in service to aristocratic families from the 1630s.
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Lady Maynard was the second wife of the 1st Baron Maynard, a gentleman of the Privy Chamber who had been an MP and was lord lieutenant of Cambridgeshire in 1620.
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He built a house at Easton Lodge, near Bishop’s Stortford in Essex, which was given an additional wing and chapel in 1621.
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The house was completely rebuilt in 1847, but the original can be seen in a 1768 engraving. The site is still discernible in the west wing of Warwick House and a gatehouse on the Stortford Road.

Tantalisingly, an inventory has survived for the house as it was in 1637, entitled ‘A Booke of all the householdstuf in Eston Lodge’. It differs from other contemporary inventories in that it does not include clothes and jewels, but is notable for detailing the richness of the furnishings and especially the needlework. It offers a detailed record of the house of Mrs Wolley’s youthful service. Lord Maynard
died in 1640 ‘due to a fever brought on by zeal in the King’s Service’ in putting down an army mutiny.
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She presumably left service not long after, as she is next heard of in 1646, when she married Jerome Wolley, master at the free grammar school in Newport, very close to Little Easton. She also helped her husband run a school in Hackney for a time. After he died, she married in 1666 one Francis Challiner, who died before February 1669. She published
The Ladies Directory
in 1661, which was quickly reprinted, following it with
The Cook’s Guide
in 1664,
The Queen-Like Closet
in 1670, and
The Ladies Delight
in 1672 – all principally recipe books. Her last authenticated book was
A Supplement to the ‘Queen-Like Closet’ or A Little of Everything
, which appeared in 1674, with recipes, notes on household management, and instructions for embroidery and letter writing. Her books all show her to be highly educated and able.

Cooks then were still principally men and among her contemporaries her principal rival was fellow author and male master cook Robert May, who had worked for Lord Montague, Lord Lumley, Lord Dormer and Sir Kenelm Digby. His
The Accomplisht Cook
was first published in 1660. In the expanded edition of 1684 he writes of the ‘Triumphs and Trophies of cooking’ that he created for his earlier patrons, as well as of his alarm at the fashion for French male cooks, who remain much in evidence for the next three centuries.
¹⁴

Mrs Wolley’s output is essentially recipe books.
The Ladies Directory
, for instance, sets out a series of recipes for dishes and home remedies, including preserves, jellies and waters with medicinal value. The longer title is ‘the ladies directory in choice experiments & curiousities of preserving in jellies, and candying both fruits & flowers: Also, an excellent way of making cakes, comfits, and rich-court perfumes. With rarities of many precious waters; among which . . . excellent water against the plague: with severall consumption drinks, approved by the ablest physicians.’