Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [44]
According to The Gentlewomans Companion, in the decades immediately after the Restoration it had become the norm for many roles in domestic service to be increasingly undertaken by women. Whether entirely the work of Mrs Wolley or not, this book has its own place in the history of servants and, indeed, in the history of women’s education, offering an insight into the opportunities afforded by domestic service and the perceived character of the whole class of female servants, who had seemed almost invisible in the previous century. As well as having enhanced ‘housewife skills’, the would-be housekeeper, for instance, must be able to manage servants: ‘And as I told you before you must Preserve well; so you must have a competent knowledge in Distilling, making Cates [Cakes], all manner of spoon-meats [liquid foods, especially for children], and the like. Be carefull in looking after the Servants, that every one perform their duty in their several places, that they keep good hours in up-rising, and lying down, and that no Goods be either spoil’d, or embezzl’d.’100
A housekeeper’s behaviour had to be ‘grave and solid’ to show that she was able ‘to govern a Family’, which meant to manage a household. The housekeeper was also by now responsible for the demeanour and behaviour of the lower women servants, and here the injunctions to senior servants echo those in John Russell’s Book of Nurture: ‘all Strangers [should] be nobly and civilly used in their Chambers; and that your Master or Lady be not dishonoured through neglect or miscarriage of Servants. To be first up, and last in bed, to prevent junketing.’101
Any chambermaid ‘to persons of Quality’, it is stressed, must be skilled at washing and mending clothes. ‘You must make your Ladies bed; . . . lay out her Night-clothes; see that her Chamber be kept clean, and nothing wanting which she desires or requires to be done. Be modest in your deportment, ready at her call, always diligent.’102Some of these skills are associated with the later role of the lady’s maid, whilst the cleaning and fires would have fallen to the housemaid. The ‘Nursery-Maids in Noble Families’ are advised, with some good sense, ‘to be naturally inclined to love young children or else you will soon discover your unfitness to manage that charge’.103
The female cook of the day was generally known as the cook-maid; her prowess ‘will chiefly consist in dressing all sorts of Meat, both Fish, flesh and Fowl, all manner of Baked-meats, all kind of Sawces, and which are most proper for every sort of Dish, and be curious in garnishing your Dishes’. Economy and cleanliness were key: ‘Be as saving as you can, and cleanly about every thing; see also that your Kitchen be kept clean, and all thin gs [sic] scoured in due time; your Larders also and Cupboards, that there be no bits of meat or bread lye about them to spoil and stink.’104
The author advises against taking perquisites (meaning leftover food that could be sold for personal profit) but it must have been a common practice: ‘do not covet to have the Kitchin-stuff for your vails, but rather ask [for] the more wages, for that may make you an ill Huswife of your Masters goods, and of your Masters good, and teach you to be a thief.’105
For under-cook-maids: ‘it behoves you to be very diligent and willing to do what you are bid