Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [71]
There is also a transcript of a memorandum to le Moine, his comptroller, relating to the provision of servants’ meals, and trying to confine them to either the steward’s room or the servants’ hall:
I am very sorry to perceive by the list sent me in today that a Custom is again this y[ea]r renewed of having more tables among my Servts than the Stewards Room & Servts Hall – I gave a positive order last year that this custom should be discontinued & that the young Ladies, maids, & People of the Kitchen should always dine in the Servts Hall as they had invariably done in my Family, but within these last two or three years.
I likewise perceive that the Place & Rank of my Secretary seems to be completely misunderstood – He is not to be looked upon as a menial servant as the Law of the Land places him above the Station of a Servt & does not include him in the Tax upon servants – He is always to be looked upon at the head of My Family, except in this Castle, where the Grieve, or Constable of the Castle, is my immediate Representative.48
There is another version in the collection, ‘Regulations and Instructions for the Future Management of the Family, Instructions for the Comptroller’, dated 1808 and equally stringent, which covers the oversight of the management of the household, the checking of accounts, the paying of bills and keeping records of expenses.49 ‘You are on no account to pay the least regard to what you may be told about custom – if the thing mentioned is proper, it ought to be adopted, whether it is a custom or not in the Family – if it is improper the sooner it is put to an end the better, & its having been a custom makes it the more necessary to abolish it and guard against it in the future.’50
Great attention is paid to entrances and exits, to ‘who is introduced by whom – or who may remain on a visit; you are to endeavour to prevent any Person being introduced into the Family who should not be so’. As in previous centuries, emphasis is placed on monitoring who is in the house at any one time, and the comptroller is asked to keep a general register ‘to include all the Establishments at my different houses with every one’s names and duties.’51
On recruiting servants, the comptroller ‘must specify their age (& Height, if under Servts) – their county – whither married or single. N.B. Single Persons are always to be preferred to married ones for servants.’ The duke was particular about uniforms: ‘When the new liveries come home from the Tailor, you will make the Servants parade with them on (the Tailor attending) to see that they are well made, agreeably to the proper pattern, & fit well.’ They are then to be ‘carefully stored & named’. The comptroller is also responsible for servants’ behaviour, ‘keeping good hours’, and is on ‘no account to suffer any gambling – Drunkenness, or other irregularity and improper conduct’.52
In a 1768 ‘Household Book’ for Alnwick, which includes many of the earlier draft notes towards these regulations, the duchess outlined her preferred management of the servants’ hall, which was ‘to be open’d every morning at 9 and to continue so till 10 & then the Usher of the Hall is to lock it up and keep it so until the dinner Bell rings when it is to be open’d for 2 hours & then lock’d up again till their supper Bell rings, when it is to be kept open till the Duke & Dutchess ring to go to Bed and no longer.’ Curiously, she adds: ‘All