Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [30]
The Cook’s Guide was dedicated to Lady Maynard’s daughter, Lady Anne Wroth, and her granddaughter, Mary: ‘The Duty I owe to your Ladyship, and the rest of your noble Family, commands more than this book is able to Express; but since ill fate hath made me altogether incapable of any Worthy return of your Love and Bounty, be pleased to accept this as a Signal of what I am obliged to.’
Her second dedication to Mary, the daughter, is a little more revealing, referring explicitly to the importance of the lady of the house being able to direct and educate her own servants in the arts of housekeeping. She writes:
The sublimity of your Lady Mother’s affairs I fear will not permit her very often to view this book; besides her Ladyship needs it not, her acceptation and approbation hereof is my honour only, not her benefit; your practice will be my content, and I doubt not your own. It is a miserable thing for any Woman, though never so great, not to be able to teach her Servants; there is no fear of it in you, since you begin so soon to delight in those Sciences as may and will accomplish you.15
Mrs Wolley refers to having prepared a banquet for King Charles I, presumably while in service to the Maynards. She writes of ‘very choice Receipts [recipes] . . . from my own Practice, who have had the honour to perform such things for the Entertainment of His late Majesty, as well as for the Nobility’.16 No painted portrait of Mrs Wolley survives, as far as I am aware, but in her writings we get more than a flavour of a Mrs Beeton-like character and tone of voice.
The Gentlewomans Companion was first published under Wolley’s name in 1673, although Wolley herself complained that this was a plagiarised version of her own manuscript brought out by the publisher, Dorman Newman, trying to cash in on her success and popularity.17 But then it was quickly reprinted in 1675 and still carried her name as author. It contains a biographical note in the beginning, ‘A Short account of the life and abilities of Authoress of this Book’, in which the assumed author cites her modesty, her previous books and listed her skills, including ‘Preserving all kinds of Sweet-meats wet and dry’, ‘Setting out of Banquets’, and ‘All manner of Cookery’. It claims that at the age of fifteen she was ‘intrusted to keep a little School’, and was already in the enviable position of accomplishments in Italian, singing, dancing and instrument playing.
After two years, she was taken on as a governess to ‘a Noble Lady in the Kingdom’ who ‘was infinitely pleas’d’ with her learning. During this time she learns the arts of cooking and preserving, and became ‘acquainted with the Court, with a deportment suitable thereunto.’ After her mistress’s death, she moved to employment with another lady whom she serves – first in the role of governess, then of stewardess (or housekeeper) and finally of secretary – for another seven years, in which she ‘kept an exact account of what was spent in the house’ and gained knowledge of ‘Physick and Chirurgery [i.e. surgery]’.18
Although this may not be an entirely accurate picture, much of this biographical material seems to have been adapted from Mrs Wolley’s previously published books. Her known works, and those possibly by other hands under her name, all make much of the fact that gentlewomen may have been ‘forced to service’ on account of being ‘impoverished by the late calamities, viz. the late Wars, Plague and Fire’, as Mrs Wolley herself observed in her confirmed autograph work, The Queen-Like Closet.19
The stresses on aristocratic and gentry families in this period might well have driven some widows and daughters into service in other households just to survive. The Gentlewomans Companion (1675) encourages parents to ‘endeavour the gentile [gentle] education of their Daughters, encouraging them to learn whatever opportunity offers, worthy [of] a