Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [64]
Letters from landowners to relations and friends are peppered with references to servants looking for posts, or posts vacant. Among the unpublished letters from Nostell Priory in Yorkshire are some from Jane, Countess of Dundonald, to Sabine, Lady Wynn of Nostell, written in 1776, about engaging a Mrs McPhell on her behalf, and enclosing ‘a very ample character of the Housekeeper [who] was in Lord Kinnoul’s [Kinnoull’s] family’. As the reference was ‘very satisfactory’, she ‘ventured to give her earnest as a hir’d servant from this term of Whitsunday being the 15th of this month till the 11th of Nov[ember].’3 Lady Dundonald did as she was bid but with some hesitation, because she had not yet heard from Lady Wynn as to her requirements and the wages she was offering, but ‘if I hadn’t hired Mrs McPhell today she was to have been engaged for another family tomorrow’.
Evidently the arrangement does not work out for Lady Dundonald wrote later that year:
I’m very sorry to find Mrs [Mc]Phell the Housekeeper has behav’ed ill, and quite disappointed the hopes we had cause to entertain from the character Lady Elizabeth Hay gave of her which I transmitted to your Ladyship. Servants nowadays are so inconsistent as to behave well in one place and ill in another. Idleness, Dress and Insolence are their prevailing vices. It gives me much uneasiness that the woman has been so foolish – how happy she might have been otherwise in your service.
One longs to know the housekeeper’s side of the story.
Few such responses remain from the eighteenth century, although one servant at Hall House, near Hawkhurst in Kent, wrote bitterly handing in their notice with the following remarks: ‘I see there is no such thing as pleasing you . . . and though I cant please you, I dont doubt but I shall please other people very well. I never had the uneasiness anywhere, as I have here.’4
Lady Dundonald had also clearly played a role in hiring a French governess: ‘Do tell me my dear Lady Winn does Madame Picq please you? I am very desirous to know if she fulfils the important duties of a governess. I wish her being married be no barr to it.’ It was very unusual to hire a married governess, but the Frenchwoman seems to have given satisfaction as there is mention of Miss Wynn’s making advances in the language: ‘I’m rejoic’d that my friend Madame le Picq gives your Ladyship such satisfaction and that Miss Wynn makes surprizing progress in the French.’5
One letter early in the century, from Samuel Heathcote to the father of a young footman, sets out typical terms of engagement: ‘If your son be at liberty to come from Mr Hurts, and have his masters free Consent: I shall be willing to take him into my service on the following terms & Conditions’. This included: ‘that He serve me as a footman, or in any other Business for the term of four years.’ Clearly, in this case flexibility was a prime requirement.
The footman, or whatever else he might be, would get a certain amount of clothing from his employer, such as annually a new hat, a coat, a waistcoat, breeches, one pair of stockings and one pair of shoes, but must find the rest himself. If, at the end of the four years, he had ‘faithfully & honestly performed his Service, He shall have fifteen pounds, and shall be then free either to leave my Service or continue longer in, as We can then Agree’. The acceptance of terms, which included making up funds if his vails (or tips) fell short, was signed by both father