Up and Down Stairs (29 page)

A coachman might even be expected to help in the organisation of moving family and staff from one estate to another, or from the country house to the London house. In 1822, the 6th Earl of Stamford transferred his household from Enville Hall in Shropshire to London for the season. The head coachman, one David Seammen, kept the accounts when eleven of the family’s servants used the family’s private carriages for the journey, setting off early in the morning and stopping overnight in Coventry and St Albans.
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The other servants
travelled by post-horse (which meant changing horses at regular intervals) and had only one overnight stop, while the earl and his valet, Samuel Church, followed later, also by the post-horse system.

The footman, made familiar to us in the eighteenth century, served the house, under the butler or steward, and attended the coach in livery on journeys. And, as in the eighteenth century, the footman’s duties were according to the Adamses ‘multifarious and incessant’, so he was not merely the liveried flunkey of fiction.
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For his household duties, he must rise early to get the dirtiest part of his work done first: cleaning shoes, boots, knives and forks; brushing and cleaning clothes; cleaning and dusting the furniture; cleaning all brass, looking glasses, frames and pictures. Next he cleaned the lamps in the family rooms, for which ‘his working dress should be generally a pair of overalls, a waistcoat and fustian jacket, and a leather apron, with a white apron to put on occasionally’. Good families ‘generally allow the footman a proper dress of this sort, exclusive of his liveries’.
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After his early cleaning duties, ‘the attendance of the footman will now be required in the breakfast parlour, for which purpose, he must prepare by washing himself, and throwing off his working dress’. Wearing his livery, he set out the table, waited at breakfast and tidied up afterwards. ‘The footman now carries such messages and cards as he is charged to deliver.’ He was responsible for laying the cloth for dinner, and placing the knives, forks and glasses, while the butler arranged the silver plate and saw that the whole was done correctly.
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The Adamses described the service current in the 1820s (
à la Russe
), in which the roles of footman and butler must blend seamlessly: ‘when the butler takes the first dish, and [he] is followed by the under butler and footman with the remainder of the fish and soups, which the butler places on the table, and removing the covers, gives them to the footman and under butler, who convey them out of the room.’ The servants ‘then take their respective stations, the butler at the side-board, to serve the wines or beer when called for; the footman at the back of his master’s chair, and the lady’s footman, if any, behind his lady.’
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After the soup and fish have been consumed, the next course, generally ‘solid joints of meat’, was served, the plates and dishes of the
previous courses being removed by the butler and carried away by the footmen. After the meat had been removed, a third course (usually pastry, pies, tarts with cheese and salads) followed. The groom of the chambers or the footmen then prepared the drawing room, ensuring ‘that lamps and candles are lighted, and the card tables set out’ and that the chairs and sofas are ‘properly arranged’. The butler and footmen finally repaired to the butler’s pantry where the footmen washed and wiped the glasses, with the under butler cleaning the plate. The footman would also carry the coffee into the drawing room, plus additional trays of toast and muffins.
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When with the coach, ‘the footman should be dressed in his best livery, his shoes and stockings being very clean, and his hat, great coat, &c. being well brushed’. He would assist the family to enter or descend from the carriage. He was also required to accompany the ladies of the family on their walks, when ‘he should preserve a modest demeanour, and protect [them], if necessary, from intrusion or insult’.
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Footmen often travelled with their employers to house parties, which added no small amount of extra luggage to the party. One nineteenth-century footman from Castle Howard in Yorkshire recalled travelling to Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire with two five-foot steel cases to take his suits of full- and half-livery, two leather portmanteaus for smaller liveries, and six hatboxes.
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At Welbeck and at Longleat special rooms were set aside as footmen’s powder rooms, fitted with long looking glasses and washbasins.
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Mrs Beeton suggested that the footman ‘while attentive to all . . . should be obtrusive to none: he should give nothing but on a waiter [tray], and always hand it with the left hand and on the left side of the person he serves, and hold it so the guest may take it with ease . . . After each meal, the footman’s place is in his pantry: here perfect order should prevail – a place for everything and everything in its place.’
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In his diary account of his tour of England made in the 1820s, Prince Pückler-Muskau was not entirely impressed by the arrangements of some country houses: ‘England is the true land of contrasts – “du haut et de bas” – at every step. Thus, even in elegant houses in the country, coachmen and grooms wait at dinner, and are not always free from the odour of the stable.’
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The senior outdoor figure – after the land steward, or estates bailiff, who looked after estate administration – was the head gardener, of whom, according to the Adamses, much was expected:

to understand his business well, and to be capable of undertaking the management of a gentlemen’s garden and grounds, he should not only be perfect in the ordinary business, and the regular routine of digging, cropping, and managing a kitchen garden, but should be also well versed in the nature of soils, manures, and composts, the best methods of propagating plants, shrubs, and trees, the management of the hot-house, green-house, conservatory, hot-beds; and the culture, not only of indigenous, but also of foreign and exotic productions.
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The nineteenth-century head gardener usually wielded considerable authority. One such was Sir Joseph Paxton, made famous by designing Crystal Palace. He was born in 1803, the son of a farm labourer, and at the age of fourteen was working with his brother at Battlesden in Bedfordshire, the estate of Sir Gregory Page Turner, and later at the Woodhall estate in Hertfordshire. It was while working for the Royal Horticultural Society at Chiswick that he happened to meet the 6th Duke of Devonshire, who was the ground landlord.
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Paxton’s good manners, in speaking clearly and carefully to the deaf duke, so impressed the latter that in 1806 he offered Paxton a job at Chatsworth with an annual salary of £70. Besides marrying Sarah Bown, the niece of Chatsworth’s housekeeper, Hannah Gregory, Paxton transformed the gardens there and travelled with the Duke on horticultural tours to Europe.

He made Chatsworth’s gardens the most famous in England, creating a pinetum and an arboretum, and designing greenhouses and hothouses. There included the largest conservatory ever built, a huge glass construction with a double-curved framework of laminated wood. His assistant gardeners were sent to America and India to collect plants. Paxton eventually became the steward or agent of the Chatsworth estates, a trusted senior servant whom the duke consulted on every matter of importance. As well as designing Crystal Palace, he also rebuilt Lismore Castle in Ireland in the popular picturesque style and served as an MP, receiving a knighthood. In the duke’s
words: ‘The creations of his talent are remarkable and conspicuous whichever way you turn. . . . [He was] the most zealous, and the least obtrusive of servants.’
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Although Paxton was perhaps exceptional, the elite head gardeners of the great country houses were generally influential, often innovators or experts with national reputations. They also edited and contributed to gardening journals, serving on the committees of the Royal Horticultural Society, founded in 1804.
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In 1886, there were twenty-two gardeners at Hatfield House, plus two women and nine boys who looked after the pleasure grounds and kitchen garden. There were also nine keepers and watchers, assisted by two boys. The stables were staffed by six men and a boy. In addition to the seventeen woodmen, nine parkmen and three boy helpers, Hatfield supported many other estate workers and farm-workers.
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In the late nineteenth century, at Eaton Hall in Cheshire, the Duke of Westminster employed a head gardener and forty under-gardeners. In the 1850s the Benyons at Englefield House in Berkshire employed between fifteen and twenty gardeners.
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In addition to their regular staff, country estates could also call on the services of a large group of retired farm labourers, retained on a small wage as ‘the gang’ to sweep leaves and paths and weed the gardens. This practice explains why, in photographs of late Victorian and Edwardian gardens, everything looks so extraordinarily immaculate – with not a twig out of place: it is an effect that can only be achieved by many hands.
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In examining the relationship between servants and their employers, it is interesting to note that it was often said that the quality of the former reflected immediately on the reputation of the latter. The Countess of Fingal recalled Lord Coventry saying: ‘I always judge a house and the people who own it by the servants,’ to which she added her own view that ‘Countries get the governments, and people the servants they deserve.’
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Good management and good working conditions, combined with a degree of humane discipline, usually meant a more loyal and efficient staff.

Mrs Beeton warned strongly against habitually complaining of servants’ deficiencies:

It is the custom of ‘Society’ to abuse its servants, – a
façon de parler
, such as leads their lords and masters to talk of the weather, and, when rurally inclined, of the crops, – leads matronly ladies, and ladies just entering on their probation in that honoured and honourable state, to talk of servants, and, as we are told, wax eloquent over the greatest plague in life while taking a quiet cup of tea. Young men at their clubs, also, we are told, like to abuse their ‘fellows’, perhaps not without a certain pride and pleasure at the opportunity of intimating that they enjoy such appendages to their state. It is another conviction of ‘Society’ that the race of good servants had died out, at least in England.
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In a delightful piece of well-observed and well-aimed social critique she wrote: ‘When the lady of fashion chooses her footman without any other consideration than his height, shape, and
tournure
of his calf, it is not surprising that she find a domestic who has no attachment for the family, who considers the figure he cuts behind her carriage, and the late hours he is compelled to keep, a full compensation for the wages he exacts . . . and for the perquisites he can lay his hands on.’
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Her next point could apply equally to other servants: ‘Nor should the fast young man, who chooses his groom for his knowingness in the ways of the turf and in the tricks of low horse-dealers, be surprised if he is sometimes the victim of these learned ways. But these are the exceptional cases, which prove the existence of a better state of things.’
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Just as Hannah Wolley’s treatises did in the seventeenth century, she took the view that it was mere common sense to treat servants generously and well.

The sensible master and the kind mistress know, that if servants depend on them for their means of living, in their turn they are dependent on their servants for very many of the comforts of life; and that, with a proper amount of care in choosing servants, and treating them like reasonable beings, and making slight excuses for the shortcomings of human nature, they will, save in some exceptional cases be tolerably well served, and, in most instances, surround themselves with attached domestics.
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Mrs Beeton emphasised the importance of the role of the mistress in the household: ‘As with the commander of an army, or the leader of
any enterprise, so it is with the mistress of a house. Her spirit will be seen through the whole establishment; and just in proportion as she performs her duties intelligently and thoroughly, so her domestics will follow in her path.’
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Engaging domestics was a duty which required good judgement on behalf of the mistress: ‘There are some respectable registry-offices, where good servants may sometimes be hired; but the plan rather to be recommended is, for the mistress to make inquiry amongst her circle of friends and acquaintances, and her tradespeople.’
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In their turn, servants would look out for potential recruits among their own families and acquaintances. Individuals were recruited young with the intention of training them for life, and whilst junior servants might stay in post with ambitions of moving up, others might have to leave altogether if they wanted to get married.
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Great landowners seem to have had a longstanding presumption against employing married servants (especially married indoor servants) or allowing servants, and especially indoor servants, to marry while in post. This does seem to have varied between houses, but was probably based on a presumption of their employer’s convenience and a fear of divided loyalty. A servant’s hours were long, and seen therefore as incompatible with running another household, their own, and a married servant with dependent children was considered a liability in terms of additional accommodation and divided loyalty. Whatever the reasons for it, it certainly encouraged an expectation that most junior servants would work for a short time, and the senior skilled servants spend a long time in their posts.
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