Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [87]
The Adamses, perhaps prejudiced by having worked their way up from the bottom, wrote slightly sniffily: ‘The business of the lady’s-maid is extremely simple, and but little varied. She is generally to be near the person of her lady . . . In her temper she should be cheerful and submissive, studying her lady’s disposition’. Her principal duties are ‘to dress, re-dress, and undress her lady’, to care for her finer clothes, to attend her in the morning, and to dress and comb her hair.70
On the other hand, Mrs Beeton thought the work of a lady’s maid more onerous than that of the valet, who was not expected to do the work of the tailor or the hatter, whereas ‘the lady’s maid has to originate many parts of the mistress’s dress herself: she should, indeed, be a tolerably expert milliner and dressmaker, a good hairdresser, and possess some chemical knowledge of the cosmetics with which the toilet-table is supplied in order to use them with safety and effect’. As well as dressing her lady, arranging her hair, and having responsibility for maintaining all her clothes, hats and boots, including mending and cleaning the finer elements, according to Mrs Beeton a lady’s maid ‘will study the fashion-books with attention, so as to be able to aid her mistress’s judgement in dressing, according to the prevailing fashion’.71
These paragons were also expected to be smartly dressed, often in the cast-off clothes of their mistress, which habitually set them apart from the other domestic servants, who were generally suspicious of them. Because they would have to stay up late with their mistresses and, indeed, travel with them, packing expertly, they also tended to be younger, in their twenties, and to hope for a post such as that of a housekeeper when they got older.72
A list of instructions given to the daughter of Thomas Coke of Holkham Hall, Norfolk, in 1822, setting out the ‘essentials for a lady’s maid’, reads almost as a parody:
She must not have a will of her own in anything, & be always good-humoured & approve of everything her mistress likes. She must not have a gr[ea]t appetite or be the least of a gourmand, or care when or how she dines, how often disturbed, or even if she has no dinner at all. She had better not drink anything but water. She must run quick the instant she is called, whatever she is about. Morning, noon and night she must not mind going without sleep if her mistress requires her attendance.73
Many a maid must have been tempted to make free with her mistress’s extensive wardrobe. Lady Dorothy Nevill dismissed her German lady’s maid when she discovered that her ‘love of the stage’ had led to her to take parts at a low theatre ‘or penny gaff’. One particular vexed her exceedingly: ‘The worst part of the business was that being cast for the part of Marie Stuart, this Teutonic Thespian annexed a very handsome black velvet dress of mine in which to impersonate Scotland’s ill-fated Queen.’74
The backbone of the household staff, reporting to the housekeeper, was the housemaid – essentially the cleaner. According to the Adamses, the upper housemaid had the care of ‘all the household linen, bed and table linen, napkins, towels, &c. which she also makes and keeps in repair, and besides cleaning the house and furniture, and making the beds . . . she [usually] washes her own clothes and has sometimes to assist the laundry-maid in getting up the fine linen, washing