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By Root 1004 0

I think, one sees the Englishman at his best. The home life of the English seems to me about as perfect as anything can be. Everything moves like clockwork. I was impressed too with the deference that the servants show to their ‘masters’ and ‘mistresses’ – terms which I suppose would not be tolerated in America. The English servant expects, as a rule, to be nothing but a servant, and so perfects himself in the art to a degree that no class of servant in America has yet reached. In our country the servant expects to become, in a few years time, a ‘master’ himself. Which system is preferable? I will not venture an answer.3

The nineteenth century was, of course, the great age of industrialisation and the expansion of towns, up until the 1880s at least (when a serious agricultural depression set in, as a result of competition from North and South American imports of grain and beef). This industrial age concentrated considerable new wealth into the world of the country house, partly because so many established landowners had considerable mineral rights at their command and therefore benefited, both directly and indirectly, from the industrial boom. Others owned land that could be profitably developed as towns expanded.4

Industrialists, bankers and other entrepreneurs also invested in land, partly for economic reasons, but also to enjoy the obvious pleasures and social amenities that their property could bring. Thus between the 1840s and the 1880s, numerous new country houses were built, both for landed families and for what is sometimes called ‘new money’. Both groups used their landed interests to attach themselves to national and local government.

The other defining feature of the century was the vast expansion of domestic servants being employed in professional and middle-class homes, inevitably echoing the household structures of the aristocratic world. This increased the kudos of working for the real thing, a traditional landed and titled family. As the numbers of full-time domestic servants continued to rise, the established and well-trained higher-ranking country-house servant was looked on increasingly as the model, representing the epitome of a growing profession.5

This expansion also offered greater opportunities for the junior servant who wanted to change careers or move upwards. The pool for general servants was much larger, although there is evidence to suggest that life in domestic service in smaller urban households was often more gruelling as well as less companionable. At the same time the burgeoning railways and the better roads of the period made travel easier between country houses, leading to an upsurge of entertaining on a huge scale.

The strains of running these enormous households could be hard on senior servants. The housekeeper at Uppark in Sussex from 1880 to 1893 could be seen as a Victorian archetype: well meaning but hard-pressed and ageing. This particular individual was later looked after by, and even later on made famous by, her literary son, H.G Wells, who rather ungallantly considered her probably ‘the worst housekeeper who was ever thought of. She had never had the slightest experience in housekeeping. She did not know how to plan work, control servants, buy stores or economize in any way.’6 Her story, and the impact of her profession on her son, as can be seen from two of his books as well as some of her own diaries, have much to reveal about the world of the country-house servant.7

Mrs Wells certainly looks the part as can be seen from her photograph: a dignified, dowager-like lady, dressed in black, her demeanour giving away none of the anxiety that was evidently always there. At Uppark, a large number of staff sustained the life of just one old lady. It was, as many country houses seemed – particularly to the young growing up in their shadow – the centre of its own universe, although not without its trials and crises.

Many years before her appointment, Mrs Wells had been the beloved lady’s maid of Miss Fetherstonhaugh, effectively the adopted daughter of the elderly