Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [111]
Sometimes, as literacy became more widespread, servants themselves would write in pursuit of a position. One young man, who had had the care of five horses, wrote to offer his services to Sir Henry FitzHerbert: ‘I understand that you are or will be shortly in want of a Groom . . . I have this morning been to Tissington and Johnson the Keeper (who knows me very well) said that I might in all probability get the situation if you were not already suited.’83
References could be less than flattering, as illustrated by this letter from a rector’s wife to Lady Alice Packe, dated 18 April 1887: ‘Dear Lady Alice, I am afraid I cannot answer all your questions quite satisfactorily about Mary Anne Millington. She was certainly very dirty but perhaps with a strict servant over her she might improve. She was only here six months as a kitchen maid & it was her first place. She was good tempered & I believe her to be honest & steady . . . [but she] wanted a proper training.’84
The habit of writing over-positive references for servants whom employers wanted to see move on was a subject of lively debate in the letters page of The Times in August 1879: ‘too many ladies give unwarrantable characters to servants whom they wish to get clear of’.85 Nevertheless a character reference was clearly essential for any future positions. As one butler tartly observed in a letter to the same publication in the same year: ‘At the whim of the master, the servant starves or he lives.’86
The papers of Henry, 4th Earl of Carnarvon, from the 1870s at Highclere include several notes relating to the recruitment of a valet, who might possibly also undertake the role of groom of the chambers.87 They make moving documents, capturing the life of a manservant in a few lines. They illustrate too how mobile servants’ lives were, for even in houses that were comfortable and well run, usually only senior servants would serve for long periods, while younger servants had to move on to get promotion.88
One candidate was an Italian, Bernardo Giannienetti, who was forty, and single; valets were unlikely to be married, given the burdens of the job. He had worked not only for General Fox for eight years, describing the general as a ‘good friend’, but also for the general’s uncle, Lord Lilford, for whom he had been valet and groom of the chambers. He was, however, ‘not accustomed to hunting clothes’, although he did speak five languages, a useful attribute in a valet who accompained his masters on their travels.
Another candidate was George Copsey, aged thirty, who for nine years had been valet to a Mr Stephen Tower of 70 Grosvenor Street and, according to the notes, had worked as a footman but not as a groom of the chambers. He spoke French and a little German, and his last post had been in a commercial situation, for the notes record that he ‘left because not comfortable at hotel’. A last note in red pencil states rather bluntly, in a phrase that echoes down the centuries, ‘Won’t do.’
More promising was William Pratt, who had been a valet and groom of the chambers to the Duke of Montrose, for six years a footman to the Earl of Mount Edgecumbe, and for three years a valet and butler to Lord March (heir to the Duke of Richmond). Although less of a linguist, he could ‘get anything in French but not converse’. He was, however, ‘used to Hunting and Shooting clothes’, which frequently needed brushing and cleaning overnight. Pratt came from Northamptonshire and was thirty-one. Additional notes remark that he was ‘steady with horses’. A reference