Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [112]
The Benyons of Englefield House in Berkshire kept a detailed servants’ book, where every detail of interest was recorded about their recruitment and training. In a parallel to the Carnarvon papers, it includes a list of questions to be put to applicants. For the butler: ‘Where did you live last, and for how long? Why did you leave, and when? What was the establishment, and what were you? This is a regular Family – prayers each morning – punctual – the Plate is under your charge, and you will help clean it – You will lay the Breakfast things, & answer the Drawing Room Bell before 12 o’clock.’90 The master here was unusually involved in the detail of administering the cellar, for he wrote somewhat peremptorily: ‘I keep the key of my own Cellar, & give you out Wine as it is wanted, of w[hi]ch. you keep an account. I order everything, and pay for everything – you order nothing except by my direction. Can you brew? You give out the Ale yourself in a fixed allowance. Can you read and write? Are you married? A Protestant – Healthy – no Apothecaries’ Bills [for bought medicines] no perquisites – how old are you? You will valet me.’91
Many valets had genuinely interesting experiences as valets and travelling companions. William Henry Clifton, who joined the 13th Duke of Norfolk’s service at the age of sixteen in 1851, had become the porter by 1885, and by 1890 was the personal valet to the 15th Duke, whom he accompanied to the Holy Land. His wage, at £80 per annum, was second only to that of the butler. He kept a diary account of his travels in the Middle East with his employer sharing an experience that would have been very unusual for a working-class man in the nineteenth century.
‘We saw the house of Nicodemus it is part now of the monastery. A building was pointed out to us as the house of Tabitha . . . April 20 . . . We stopped at Sarris where we found some tents and lunch all ready laid out on the ground. Some chicken, some mutton and two hard boiled eggs on each plate and some bread and an orange. The place was pointed out where the Ark remained for some 20 years’.92 He also left a memoir of a visit to Spa in eastern Belgium, which includes a reference to his purchase of a French grammar so that he could learn French.93
Great households required careful management, for the very practical reason that security was paramount where expensive commodities and valuable objects were concerned. In a community dedicated to the comfort of the landowning family, it was not unreasonable to regulate the noise generated by comings and goings. Myriad examples can be found in country houses of household regulations, often printed, which read like school or college rules. Perhaps the rule existed because the system was regularly abused, illustrating normal rather than proscribed behaviour.
One example of a typically structured set of household regulations in the nineteenth century can be found at Holkham Hall in Norfolk, giving duties, times of meals, rules about access and entertaining in the servants’ hall:
The porter is always to be in livery, and never to be called away to discharge other duties than those which strictly belong to his office. Outer doors are to be kept constantly fastened, and their bells to be answered by the Porter only, except when he is otherwise indispensably engaged, when the Assistant by his authority shall take his place.
Every servant is expected to be punctually in his/her place at the time of meals. Breakfast: 8 a.m. Dinner 12.45. Tea 5 p.m. Supper 9 p.m. No Servant is to take any knives or forks or other article, nor on any account