Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [67]
Most landowners appear blind to the unfairness of the life of young slaves, but were ready to find fault with their freeborn counterparts. Grumbling about servants became a national pastime in the eighteenth century. In 1711, the Spectator printed a satirical exchange of letters, the first asking the journal to consider
the general corruption of Manners in the servants of Great Britain . . . I have contracted a numerous Acquaintance among the best sort of people, and have hardly found one of them happy in their servants. This is a matter of great Astonishment to Foreigners . . . especially since we cannot but observe That there is no Part of the world where servants have those Privileges and Advantages as in England: They have no where such plentiful Diet, large Wages, and indulgent liberty: There is no Place wherein they labour less, and yet where they are so little respectful, nor wast[e]ful, more negligent.
The Spectator published an arch response, blaming ‘the custom of giving Board Wages [or cash wages in lieu of being fed, when the employer was away]: ‘This one instance of false Oeconomy, is sufficient to debauch the whole Nation of Servants.’22
Dean Jonathan Swift made remorseless fun of serving men and women, as we have already seen from his trenchant views on the footman. His brilliant satire on the faults of servants of a large household was modelled on an English house but was most likely informed by his experiences in both England and Ireland. Although written in the 1730s, Directions to Servants was not published until 1745, after his death. 23
Swift deals with each member of staff in turn: butler, cook, footman, coachman, groom, housekeeper, chambermaid, waiting maid, housemaid, children’s maid, nurse, laundress, dairymaid, house steward, land steward, porter and tutoress – and thus supplies a titillating portrait of the servants of an aristocratic household. He revels especially in absurd advice:
When your master or lady call a servant by name, if that servant be not in the way, none of you are to answer, for there will be end to your drudgery, and masters themselves allow, that if a servant comes when he is called that is sufficient. . . . When you are at fault, be always pert and insolent; and behave yourself as if you were the injured person; this will immediately put your master and lady off their mettle . . .24
Never submit to stir a Finger in any Business but that for which you were particularly hired. For example, if the groom be drunk or absent, and the butler be ordered to shut the stable door, the Answer is ready, An it please your Honour, I don’t understand horses: If a corner of the hanging wants a single nail to fasten it, and the Footman be directed to tack it up, he may say, he doth not understand that sort of work, but his Honour may send for the upholsterer.25
Most memorable of all: ‘Never come till you have been called three on four times; for none but dogs will come at the first whistle: and when the master calls “Who’s there?” no servant is bound to come; for Who’s there is nobody’s name.’26
One cannot help wondering about Swift’s relationships with his own domestics, which, given his connection with ‘Stella’ – the daughter of a household servant – when he himself was a mere secretary, were probably not as clear cut as one might think. One nineteenth-century book of stories about Swift and other Irish wits contains some plausible, if anecdotal, accounts of how he treated his own staff:
Swift’s manner of entertaining his guests, and his behaviour at table, were curious. A frequent visitor thus described them: He placed himself at the head of the table, and opposite to a great pier glass, so that he could see whatever his servants did at the great marble side-board behind his chair. He was served entirely in plate, and with great elegance . . .
The beef once being over roasted, he called for the cook-maid to take