Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [2]
From the late seventeenth century onwards, servants were more likely to seek ways of moving on, either to new and better jobs, or sometimes out of domestic service altogether,6 although the word ‘servant’ continued to be applied to men and women of considerable ability and experience, such as stewards, French chefs, butlers and housekeepers. Moreover, the world of domestic service was itself subject to many distinct levels of internal hierarchy, reflected in areas such as address, dress, meals and accommodation. The more senior the servant, the better the status and the related rewards. Positions that offered fringe benefits could be particularly attractive.
In 1825, a footman could earn £24 a year and he also received free accommodation, clothes and much of his food (and might possibly get tips as well). This compares well to the average agricultural wage of around 11 shillings a week, with some upward variation at harvest, out of which workers would have to feed and clothe themselves and their families, as well as pay rent.7
In the 1870s, a skilled French chef in a country house could earn as much as £120 a year while an experienced butler could hope to earn around £80. Even a young footman might be paid £28 annually plus food, accommodation, and an allowance for clothing and hair powder. This puts many country-house servants into quite a different league from the worst-paid industrial workers of the time. One survey of labour in Salford in the 1880s suggested that over 60 per cent of industrial workers lived in near poverty, earning less than 4 shillings a week, from which they had to find shelter, clothing and food.8
One key theme that emerges across the centuries is the mutual interdependence of the country-house world. Many country-house servants served the same families for most of their working lives, and there are numerous examples of deep attachment, loyalty and mutual respect. A particularly vivid and well-celebrated example of this is illustrated by the series of portraits, commissioned by the Yorke family during the eighteenth century, of their servants at Erddig, near Wrexham (now owned by the National Trust), and the doggerel verses that described and celebrated their roles in the household – they famously commissioned more portraits of their servants than of their own family.9 Bequests to servants can be traced from the Middle Ages onwards, recognising the trust and loyalty of individuals, and intended to help make secure their old age.
In the post-medieval world, the changing perception of individual liberty led to a continual re-examination of the role and profession of the residential domestic servant, whose regimented lives and dependent positions ensured the existence of the country house. The challenges to landed power, the changes brought by the industrial revolution and a new political idealism all had their impact on the way servants saw their work. By the early nineteenth century, the word itself had begun to take on more negative associations, of subservience to an inflexible class system.
For instance, William Tayler, an experienced footman, wrote in his diary in 1837: ‘The life of a gentleman’s servant is something like that of a bird shut up in cage. The bird is well housed and well fed, but deprived of liberty, and liberty is the dearest and sweetes[t] object of all Englishmen. Therefore I would rather be like the sparrow or lark, have less of housing and feeding and rather more liberty.’10 But elsewhere he reflected that he could not understand how tradesmen and mechanics could sneer at the domestic servant, as, by virtue of his exposure to more variety, richer experience and greater mobility, he saw so much more of the world