Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [57]
The groom of the chambers usually had the key role of greeting and announcing visitors, then directing them to their proper rooms, ensuring that they had everything required for their comfort.54 Some grooms of the chambers were even trained in upholstery.55 This individual was certainly among the servants who received a share of the fees when paying visitors were shown round a house. This sometimes led to rivalry with the housekeeper, as apparently happened at Cannons, the home of the Duke of Chandos.56
Below the footmen, there were clearly often additional men and boys (by the nineteenth century known as ‘odd men’) who could help with dirtier, more manual jobs, including cleaning drains and gutters, and clearing away slops. One unusually titled junior male servant is worth noting here, although he is one of a kind. ‘The Rubber’ is referred to in the early-eighteenth-century ‘General Instructions’ drawn up for the household at Boughton in Northamptonshire. ‘He is under the Direction of the Hous[e]keeper to Dry rub the Floors in the House, to fetch and carry Water for the Hous[e]maids for washing the house, to fetch and carry the Ladders and assist upon the Ladders in Washing the Wainscoat and Cornishes when ordered.’ He was also responsible for lighting the fire in the steward’s hall, waiting at table there, and helping with carrying in the food.57
The female indoor staff were by this time very much under the leadership of the housekeeper. This increasingly essential figure managed the linen, the cleaning of rooms and, if there were no clerk of the kitchen or male cook, the kitchen. Below her would be the female cook, followed by a number of chambermaids, housemaids, laundrymaids, and kitchen and scullery maids. Those housekeeping duties that in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had been managed by the mistresses of the household were by now largely handed over to a trusted housekeeper. Many of them seem to have done long service, as did Mrs Garnett at Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire, who ran the house for over forty years.58
One former housekeeper, Elizabeth Raffald, who had worked for Lady Elizabeth Warburton, put together over 800 recipes for pickling, potting, wines, vinegars, ‘catchups’, and distilling, which were published as The Experienced English Housewife in 1769. This entrepreneurial lady also set up an early registry for servants in Manchester, before running an inn, a profession to which many retired senior servants devoted their savings and energies.59
At the beginning of the century, in gentry households at least, housekeepers might well be a family relative of some sort. In 1792, Francis Grose, looking back in time, wrote: ‘When I was a young man there existed in the families of . . . the rank of gentlemen, a certain antiquated female, either maiden or widow, commonly an aunt or cousin.’ He recalled: ‘By the side of this good old lady jingled a bunch of keys, securing in different closets and corner cupboards all sorts of cordial waters’ as well as: ‘washes for the complexion . . . a rich, seed cake, a number of pots of currant jelly and raspberry jam.’60 As the housekeeper’s room became a place where expensive foodstuffs would be stored under lock and key, the individuals themselves were often depicted in paintings with a large bunch of keys at their waists.
They were more likely to have been a senior indoor maid, cook, or nurse. In the mid eighteenth century, one dairymaid, Sarah Staniforth, unusually managed to work her way up the ladder. After joining the staff of Holkham Hall in 1731, she became housemaid in 1741 and housekeeper in 1750. In this post she was paid £20 a year and remained there until her death in 1772. In her will she left over £1,000.61
In grander country houses, a female might be an under-cook to a chef, but