Up and Down Stairs - Jeremy Musson [91]
One of the major features found in all accounts of life in a great country house was the emphatic hierarchy between the upper and the lower servants. The upper servants – usually the house steward, housekeeper, wine butler, under butler, groom of the chambers, valet, head housemaid and lady’s maid – were generally known as ‘the Upper Ten’.101 The lower servants were known as the Lower Five, although in many cases there were more than five. The Upper Ten ate in the steward’s room, where they were served by a specially designated steward’s room footman or boy (or, if there was no steward, in the housekeeper’s room). The Lower Five (a term that encompassed all the other junior indoor servants) ate in the servants’ hall.
Under the steward came the butler. Like the steward, he was not a liveried servant but wore clothes similar to those worn by a gentleman, if of an old-fashioned cut or with some distinguishing element, such as a tie unlike that expected of a gentleman, so that in theory he would not be mistaken for one.102 William Lanceley witnesses the embarrassment caused in the late nineteenth century when the elderly Lord Redesdale, who had rigidly stuck to an outmoded style of evening dress, was famously mistaken at one house for a butler.103
A butler’s first duty was, according to the Adamses, to see that breakfast was duly laid; either the butler or the under butler would wait on the family during the meal. With breakfast over, the butler was free to take his own breakfast with the housekeeper. He must then be prepared to receive visitors at the front door. At luncheon, the butler arranged the table and brought in the drinks. ‘If wine is wanted for the luncheon, it is his duty to fetch it from the cellar; and if ale, to draw or bring it up when wanted.’ The butler usually kept the keys of the wine and ale cellar, and maintained the stock book.104 The care and provision of wine and ale figured largely in the butler’s traditional role. As Mrs Beeton observed:
The office of butler is thus one of very great trust in a household. Here, as elsewhere, honesty is the best policy: the butler should make it his business to understand the proper treatment of the different wines under his charge, which he can easily do from the wine-merchant; his own reputation will soon compensate for the absence of bribes from unprincipled wine-merchants, if he serves a generous and hospitable master. Nothing spreads more rapidly in society than the reputation of a good wine cellar, and all that is required is wines well chosen and well cared for.105
At dinnertime
the under butler or footman lays the cloth, and carries up the articles wanted, under the direction of the Butler, who gives out the necessary plate, kept by him under lock, and generally in an iron chest. [The butler] sets and displays the dinner on the table, carrying in the first dish, waits at the side-board, hands wine round or when called for; removes every course, and sets and arranges every fresh course on the table according to his bill of fare, which is placed at the sideboard for reference; and does not leave the room till the dessert and wine have been placed on the table by him.106
The servants were waited on by junior servants who were by this method trained in the discipline of serving at table and clearing away.
Until the early nineteenth century, meals in the grander houses were served à la française, where all the dishes making up a course were laid out together on the table simultaneously. When this was replaced by service à la Russe, the food was served individually to each guest by footmen, with the carving carried out at the sideboard. It took several decades to be fully absorbed into English dining, and inevitably there were frequent compromises of the two styles. The advantages of dining à la Russe were that food arrived