Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [27]
Nor did they think this hierarchy ‘servile’, whilst ‘their fare was always of the best, their apparel, fine, neate, handsome and comely’.118
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:120 ‘The Golden world is past and gone.’121 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.
2
The Beginning of the Back Stairs and the Servants’ Hall
The Seventeenth Century
IN 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.3
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