Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [72]
Another series of drafts, dated to the 1770s and possibly in the duchess’s own handwriting, set out the rules for behaviour: ‘No swearing or cursing or indecent Language is to be suffered at any of the Tables. If in the Serv[a]nts Hall the person for the first fault to be turned out of the Servants Hall & not re-admitted but on promise of better conduct for the future & if the fault is repeated they are to be turn’d away . . . Maid servants are not to sit gossiping in Servants Hall or even to be near there but at Meal Time & to depart as soon as the Table is clear’d.’54
In the same book there is a note on ‘Rules for Conduct’, relating to her own attendance at church and daily prayers, in which she took herself to task: ‘Not to be severe with my servants for small thoughts [presumably meaning faults] and frequent chiding lessens authority. To instruct my servants as far as I am able to furnish them good Books suited to their Capacity and see they attend regularly at church.’ She further resolved: ‘If any of my Servants are vicious it is my duty to reprove them severely & to employ all sorts of means to reclaim them, but if I find no appearance of success I ought to turn them away.’55
At Alnwick and elsewhere, most servants – especially the upper and liveried servants – expected tips (or ‘vails’) to supplement their annual wages, which were usually given by guests when they came to stay, or to dine, or for other considerations. A servant would sometimes be told how much he might expect in tips before he was hired. One coachman’s place, for example, was advertised in 1760 at ‘£10 per annum with £6 in vails’. In the early eighteenth century, the Earl of Leicester disbursed substantial amounts in vails when on visits to the houses of his friends, giving 10 guineas to Lord Hobart’s staff, and 10 more to the Duke of Grafton’s. On family visits he would hand a lump sum to a senior servant to distribute to the others.56
In Eight Letters to His Grace the Duke of — on the custom of Vails-Giving in England (1760), Jonas Hanway railed against the custom of tipping. He imagined the horrors of a country parson invited to stay with a bishop, ‘obliged by the tyranny of this custom to pay more for one dinner, than will feed his large family for a week!’ He recounted the tale of a colonel staying with a duke who asked his host for the names of the servants. When his host asked him the reason, he replied: ‘Why, says he, My Lord Duke, in plain truth, I cannot afford to pay for such good dinners as your Grace gives me and at the same time support my equipage without which I cannot come here; I therefore intend to remember these gentlemen in a codicil in my will’.57 By ‘pay’, here he meant ‘tip’.
The Duke of Newcastle showed Hanway’s letters to George III, who tried to set an example to the nation by banning the acceptance of vails in his own household. This move was greeted with suppressed fury by the royal servants and the next time the king visited the theatre he was hissed by members of his own staff from the anonymity of the gallery. However, he is said to have sat through it all ‘with the greatest composure’.58
On a more modest scale was this piece of fatherly advice on tipping from the owner of Mapledurham in Berkshire to his son. When Michael Blount went to stay with his uncle at Stonor Park in Oxfordshire in 1761, his father (also Michael) wrote to him, offering hints on what clothes he should take and telling him that
uncle Strickland will tell you the hours and rules of the house, which I dare say you will strictly comply with . . . When you leave Stonor (which will be the following Wednesday or Thursday, when I will order horses and a servant to go again for you) you must give the maid that makes your bed and fires there half a crown, the butler half a crown, the groom two shillings as you get upon your horse, and the man that dresses your hair &c four shillings. This will be handsome and sufficient.59
Some houses of the period might be little occupied for